Comment by crazygringo
4 days ago
I still don't understand how that would work. Yes, e-ink is great for updating prices, I welcome it at grocery stores.
But if both me and another person are standing in front of the prosciutto and cured meats fridge, we're seeing the same prices, even if I'm poor and they're rich.
I think they're conflating/confusing a bunch of different things here. E-ink tags let stores run sales more often, offer "happy hour" time of day discounts, etc. It's not so much individualized (other than probably some demographic targeting, like raising prices 5-6 pm when well employed people are picking stuff up on the way home).
The personalized pricing is usually by having everyone pay through an app. The app knows your buying history and tracks everything you do so they can fine tune their deals for you, surfacing discounts on things that pull you into the store, running e-coupons when it knows you're price conscious, etc. etc.
Both systems are fair on the surface but exploit the asymmetry of billion dollar information systems vs the average consumer. All of these tweaks ensure they get the maximum amount of money that they can out of their customer base which means on average everyone ends up paying more, all while being very hard to point to exactly how you got screwed.
The economy requires companies to be mind readers to function optimally [0], which is impossible, so they choose the less invasive option of harvesting all your data.
[0] One of the core foundations of neoclassical economics is unbounded rationality which includes the ability to predict the future.
The UFCW's defense is that e-ink price tags "take away skilled work". I have no clue what intense high-ELO skill is required to stick a sticker onto a shelf, but I'm sure they can figure out how to stick an E-ink tag up instead and how to replace some batteries.
In my state there are laws requiring the price charged at the register to mark what's displayed on the shelf, with the store paying a penalty (price * some multiplier) to a customer who has been charged more than the displayed price. If the prices were constantly changing there would definitely be some people trying to game the system or suing because they feel the store had been doing something unfair. I can't see automatic price gouging working out in a physical store at all.
Just show a barcode. Scan to reveal your personal price. Maybe bundle it with coupons to make people accept it easier.
This already exists at Target - scan each item as you put it in your card, and note the ones that are "cheaper when ordered online for in-store pickup" and complain at the register and get your discount.
Congratulations!
IME there usually isn't much contention looking at the same section of shelf. If I'm looking at the cured meats, I'm the only person looking at any shelves within 6ft either direction. Other nearby people are walking past, looking at shelves on the opposite side of the aisle, waiting for me to finish before checking the meats, etc. The algorithm doesn't have to optimize for literally every person/sale to still have a lot of impact.
They don't have to be that specific. They can look at you and the other customers in the store in aggregate, and raise/lower prices accordingly.
If you're poor and you're a in store full of millionaires, you'll end up paying millionaire prices, unless it's for an item the millionaires rarely buy.
Well that's easy enough - don't apply sneaky pricing when there's two people looking.
This arms race accelerates quickly. The question becomes stopping someone observing from a distance. It would have to be very tight to go unnoticed, and it seems likely to me that when detected it would quickly become a costly PR SNAFU, in addition to the cost of all the tech you need to deploy. I'd guess that grocers have little disposable capital anyway, given how low profits tend to be.
They just get rid of the prices on the shelves.
Nobody will shop there then. They've tested this and consumers will go elsewhere unless you're selling super luxury goods.
In my town of 100,000 people there are four options. A universally high priced grocery, a dirt cheap, goods at our near their sell by date with the expected low quality grocery, a gas station convenience store, or a bunch of mid-tier grocers with a few different names all owned by the same parent company.
Many places would dream of my "options".
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