The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.
“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. 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.
Apps like Uber already use surge pricing, in which higher demand leads to higher prices in real time. Companies across industries have caused controversy with talk of implementing surge pricing, with fast-food restaurant Wendy’s making headlines most recently. Electronic shelf labels allow the same strategy to be applied at grocery stores, but are not the only reason why retailers may make the switch.
If it’s hot outside we can raise the price of water…”
Holy fuck dude that’s some endgame capitalism right there.
So what if you placed some water in your cart, walked around and then they raise the price before you check out? How does that work?
There are laws in many states governing many items clearly articulating that the price cannot change during business hours/within a business day.
Hopefully the FTC revs up it’s engines like it’s been doing.
Whole Foods and Best Buy have done this for years. It allows centralized control of sale pricing without having to print and post new signage at every location.
Aldi has been doing it forever. But it doesn’t change based on surge pricing. What an evil idea…
Aldi has been doing it forever
That’s because most supermarkets in Europe have had these systems for about 15 years. As usual, the yanks are a decade behind and find a way to use it for greed :(
