this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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I mean it could be a precursor for that but where I live some stores have had them for over half a decade without surge pricing. But who knows
Every time I've worked with a customer wanting to do digital pricing labels, the end goal is what we would now call surge or adaptive pricing
Like I said, maybe it'll happen but we have digital price stickers in almost every store because they're just easier. Same convenience allows surge pricing but surge pricing isn't the only reason to do it.
They're probably doing it and you don't notice.
It would be actual news here so you'd need someone to notice. Me, any other consumer, their workers...
I get the conspiratorial idea but I very much doubt they've managed to keep it secret from everyone. I'd be happy (so to speak) to be proven wrong.
If there are no laws explicitly preventing the practice then all companies who can do it are doing it.
It'd be kinda surprising since no store has been known to do it so far, so nobody has noticed or talked. And some people watch the prices and their fluctuation like hawks. Not to mention the employees.
I get the pessimistic view but I just don't believe that myself. But like I said, (un)happy to be proven wrong though.
Just curious where you live? You may be in a more honest place.
Not OP, but same in Germany. Digital tags everywhere, no surge pricing.
Finland. If they're doing surge pricing at stores here I've been living under a rock. Couldn't find anyone claiming they are doing that either. Event tickets and hospitality stuff seems to be where they're using but not stores, even though stores have those fancy price displays.
Here in the US, as you probably know, everything that involves money is a scam to a greater or lesser degree.
The actual circumstances where surge pricing would be worth doing are pretty uncommon. Like, what news item would make a manager think "Oh, I should double the price of jeans for the next four hours" or "No one will care if the price of eggs is 50% higher between 7am and 11am". Price changes longer than that, or less frequent than weekly are just price changes, and digital tags just make it happen faster, more reliably, and with less labor.
They track all purchases, and that means data they can feed into an algorithm to track typical hourly/weekly/monthly demand. If they know eggs are more in demand by X% between 7am and 11am then it certainly makes sense to charge Y% more during that time.
Makes sense from a profit standpoint, you mean? Because it certainly doesn't make sense from a standpoint of prudence, morality, ethics, community, or common sense.
Welcome to 2026. It's been this way for a while now.
Do you think that's how surge pricing works on apps like Uber? There's a human watching the market and constantly making adjustments?
Or do you think it's computerized (or nowadays, probably AI)? Which do you think is more likely?
Doesn't matter. You still need some condition to trigger price changes. No grocery is going to change the price of bread based on the wheat futures market, because no consumer cares about wheat futures. Maybe they'd change based on their own inventory, but they can't do that too quickly, or the price will change between the time customer picks up the product and the clerk rings it up.
There's a whole population of people who shop in advance - visit web sites, check the store fliers, whatever - to get the best price. If a shelf price doesn't match their researched price, they're never going to that store again.
Aside from gas stations, grocery stores seem to have the most volatile pricing. They're already making weekly changes on dozens of items, probably based on purchasing algorithms. Maybe that counts as retail "surge" pricing, but it's not the dynamics that people fear when talking about digital price tags.
Just because it's not happening constantly everywhere, doesn't mean that it isn't being tested some places, and isn't coming soon.
It also doesn't mean that it is.
What reality do you live in, because I want to go to there
Germany.
Even if that's not the goal of the current management, it's only a matter of time before they get replaced by someone else and there's far far more assholes in this world than good people, so it's all but guaranteed that at some point someone will use the tech for surge pricing and adaptive pricing
Yeah in Europe these digital price tags have been common for a long time now. My local grocery store has had them for at least a decade now.
How do you know, are you personally tracking the prices of all items at every place with these tags?
I do keep track of how much things cost, yeah? I thought everyone did that. But also, kinda interesting if nobody else has noticed it either, because it would be legit newsworthy thing here if someone took up surge pricing
Everything? You pay attention to the prices of every item at every store around you? OK
Interesting you'd think every single person would have to pay attention to every single product to notice surge pricing. But it's just one of those things that yeah, someone would notice and it would actually be newsworthy for someone to start doing that here. They'd be the first to bringing in an immediately hated practise.
But hey, maybe you're right and they're managed to do it without anyone knowing. You never know I guess. I just don't believe that.
No. But in order to say, with as much certainty and conviction as you have, that it is not happening at all ever, you would.
No I wouldn't personally have to follow every single price. Others are watching prices too, that's just normal stuff. Not to mention the people who actually work at these stores.
What's more likely in your opinion, that they have managed to introduce this new controversial pricing scheme without people finding out, not even their own workers, or that they've just not done it? I don't know man, sounds unlikely to me.
Without anything to support it it's just one of those conspiracy theories.
You seem to be assuming that we're talking about massive shifts in prices, not changes of a few cents here and there to test the waters.
People notice even small stuff. I notice it too on some products. Not to mention the workers would know about it, corporate would know about it etc.
I mean if you have something to support this theory then I'm really interested to see it but at this point this is just a conspiracy theory.
My support for the theory is capitalism. Look around. There's no way that these tags are not being planned to be used that way. We are literally in the comment section of a post where an industry analyst, someone who ostensibly knows what they're talking about, says they're going to do exactly that. Get real.
If it isn't happening already, it will be happening soon.
We're talking about if it is happening where I live. You seem certain it is. I'd like to see something better than "get real" to support that, if you don't mind.
I have literally several years worth of notebooks full of what items costed at various locations. Paper shopping list, write the price down of the item on that specific trip at that location.
Started so I could compare costco prices to Walmart to local grocer because size and sales aren't always guarantees of best price. My local grocer in particular often charges extra for the bulk version.
You aren't the first to suggest this crazy but I was at one point feeding enough children that this mattered. I was using pricing to determine final cost of each meal and would drop meals in a out of rotation based purely on cost.
This was also a fun teaching opportunity, make the kids mentally add up all the prices with multiplers and coupons and try to see who gets closest to the actual total. Also to always do the math to determine per unit price whole accounting for sales and coupons.
Most of them are adults now but I still have a mental model around pricing. It's also how I know prices have increased by 50-150%, cpi and other stats be damned.