- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- news@lemmy.world
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While the labels give retailers the ability to increase prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way. “To be honest, I don’t think that’s the underlying main driver of this,” Gallino said. “These are companies that tend to have a long-term relationship with their customers and I think the risk of frustrating them could be too risky, so I would be surprised if they try to do that.”
How to tell if an academic doesn’t get out enough.
Haha literally what planet do they live on?
Yeah every store values client loyalty, but pretending companies (e.g. Walmart for crissakes) want to be loyal to their customers should disqualify you from being called an “industry analyst”.
Probably the same guy that says inflation is “not a problem/getting better/under control”.
Are these people just available for hire by the media? Are they like professional witnesses for “two sides” reporting?
Inflation is largely not a problem, corporate price gouging accounts for the bulk of increases. Price gouging increases are an enormous fucking problem for people. Calling it inflation is their script, don’t adopt their language.
Consolidation or competitors that has been allowed almost unabated the last 25 years exacerbates the effects.
Oh Ffs, what a fucking idiot, or liar, probably both.
Of course that’s the whole fucking point, you over-educated fucktard.
And people wonder why the average Joe mistrusts academia?
I mean there are clear savings advantages to switching to electronic tags. It takes like 30 to 100 man hours every week to swap out labels depending on store size. Thats like 20 to 50k a year you can save on labor by just having them automatically update each week.
Plus the tags/price strips right now aren’t free. Probably another 5k you save a year
So, if these prices can be so easily updated, surely the retailers can now include tax in the listed price. It’s very simple automated math of course…
Wait, you’re telling me that the price on the shelf doesn’t include tax where you live?
It’s standard in the US for the listed price to not include any taxes.
And how about price comparison, is it mandatory for US supermarkets to display the price per unit based on a standard unit of measurement (such as per pound or per ounce or whatever metrics are used)?
Depends, generally no. Some supermarkets do as a company policy though and I choose to shop at those that do show per-unit pricing (and are also locally/employee owned)
Depends on the state
Ah ok, thanks.
Ads are digital. The price ranges become digital. They have no excuse.
I’m sure you’ll still get those bootlickers defending the practice of not including tax, but they will make even less sense than before.
No way this benefits the consumer.
Of course not. It lets their office or even corporate computers change the prices in real time whenever they feel like it. Hypothetically, you could pick something off a shelf where the digital signset $3, and by the time you walked it up to a register, it cost $4. It’s like changing the price of something in a shop simulation video game after the customer has picked it up, and now they have to pay $9,999.99 for a bag of potato chips.
That would be illegal. I worked on the software deployment of these devices in a store. If we increased the price, we’d automatically give the customer the lowest price in the last several hours.
The other problem was they were extremely low powered and low bandwidth and it would have killed the battery to update more than a few times a day.
So you’re saying there’s going to be a big influx of cash into small battery research and improving efficiency for tiny screens/low power WiFi?
And my country has price laws where tagged prices have to be honoured (I forget all the technicalities of the policy) - so if something scans up wrong, what stops the employee at service from changing the shelf price to reflect the wrong one while another employee walks over to verify with me? It would need a nefarious intent, which most minimum wage shop employees could care less about, but it’s a theoretical that could happen, especially on higher price items.
Surge pricing on Surge.
It makes you feel cool?
Imagine walking down the aisle, normal day, no thoughts about the prices or any of that.
Then one day you walk down the aisle but this time you forgot your phone in the car.
Different prices. Then some one walks is coming close from the other end of the aisle. The price changes. They walk past, nonplussed. A few seconds later, it switches back.
Looks like the US is like 10 years behind the Europe.
But if I understand correctly those electronic shelf labels will be remote controlled. IoT?
They’ve been in use in the US in other retail outlets for about as long.
I suppose there was little rationalization for them in grocery stores until recently. Keep in mind grocery stores are massive chains, largely stocked by vendors - the store doesn’t own a huge portion of the product, they rent out space to vendors.
So there’s probably also the interaction between vendor and the chain - how the pricing update is managed.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable about how grocery works could chime in. I only have a cursory understanding. I wonder what their It systems look like, how they integrate/communicate with vendor systems.
I used to work for a company that did contract work for retail and grocery stores. For the most part, there isn’t a whole lot of direct integration, unless you’re talking about the huge chains and huge suppliers. Buyers make an order, that order gets tracked, shipped, added to inventory, and placed on the shelf.
Walmart is so huge and so nickel-and-dime that I’m sure they track and update prices based on a variety of factors, much like how Amazon does their micro-pricing stuff.
They are - and they’re e-ink based so power lasts a long time. I’ve not been to a store that don’t have them in many years.
They’re great - always showing the correct price/ amount, and it’s less hassle for the store to change.
As long as you have a free market and not a coordinated one it will work out great for you guys too
As long as you have a free market and not a coordinated one it will work out great for you guys too
Ah, so we’re fucked
Aren’t they already in use by some stores? M
Maybe most of this is just circus to keep you worried?
The thing I don’t like about them is the BT tracking/detection. Not seen any system with the capability to track individuals, but it will show heat maps of where people spend time and clump up. This comes “free” as it’s usually zigbee or similar radios that are used, and these support BT
Yeah, I’m not actually that worried. I’ve seen these in use at hardware stores for quite a while now. It’s just useful to assume that Walmart is planning to fuck you over. That’s a good point with BT though, many of the kind of microcontrollers that would be used for this sort of thing offer BT connectivity as well.
They’re definitely in use by Best Buy
Several years ago, I contracted for a short time as a software engineer for a team within Walmart that was working on an in-house digital label solution. It was pretty cool as it was all custom hardware running Android. I think the project probably could’ve been run better, though. I’d guess that’s part of the reason they have taken so long to deploy some type of digital label solution, and ultimately went with a third party product.
Technically IoT, but usually these systems use a hub that uses some other tech to connect to the labels as wifi is really power hungry, even if you just wake up every once in a while to ask for updates, and you don’t want 10000 wifi iot things polluting the bandwidth.
the Europe
I hope there’s pushback on this. They mention prices can change as often as 10 seconds. Meaning you can add something to your cart and by the time you check out the price has gone up. That seems like false advertising. Will the store associates have a way to override the cost if we make a fuss and ask them to price match the items to the cost when we added them to our carts?
It feels like this is another area where technology is advancing faster than our consumer protection laws. I suppose another thing to write your local representatives about. I’d hope legislation protecting a family grocery shopping would be an easy win for politicians and bipartisan.
We just need a law to prevent them from changing the prices during business hours or limit it to one change per day if they are open 24/7.
You don’t have them yet?
This is illegal in my state. I’d be interested to see how it complies with other states’ price tag laws and labeling requirements.
We already have this in Australia - my local supermarkets are all using electronic pricing labels - you cannot tell if prices have changed and they can literally change them whilst you are in the store - you cannot even tell when something is on special anymore as the large paper tags you used to see have all gone in the name of “saving the environment” - which is absolute garbage considering we are subjected to a grocery store duopoly in Australia who are renowned for price gouging….
I’ve often wondered what the “saving the environment” numbers of these actually look like. Is making and recycling paper shelf labels worse for the environment than a small device that’s a mix of plastics and electronics and has a battery that will eventually need replacing? Especially when I consider my local grocery store probably has thousands of these tags, all rolled out overnight one night, that will probably all need replacement batteries at similar intervals too.
Huh they’ve been in various brands and stores in Canada for atleast a few years. Surprised it didn’t start down there and make its way up here.
The race to the bottom continues imagine all the useful things we could be doing instead of this fucking shit just to take more from the pockets of people. Fuck this shit
I see different prices for each customer depending if the shelfs are full or nearly empty. Market rulez!1!! Or prices according to (estimated) customers income.
dynamic pricing, perhaps. Depend on who is looking, the price on e-tag will display to match the ability to pay of that customer. If you are rich, then price increase.
Not sure how that would work at the checkout, unless you pay as you go.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels.
If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.
Companies across industries have caused controversy with talk of implementing surge pricing, with fast-food restaurant Wendy’s making headlines most recently.
The ability to easily change prices wasn’t mentioned in Walmart’s announcement that 2,300 stores will have the digitized shelf labels by 2026.
Walmart’s not the first major grocer to make the change, as you can already find electronic shelf labels at Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh stores, and the Midwestern chain Schnucks.
While the labels give retailers the ability to increase prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way.
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