A Boring Dystopia

"...not talking about price segmentation..."

Yet.

There's no sense closing the barn door after all the horses got out.

I feel like it's one of those things that someone came up with the benign idea first, and then later some jackass was like "Hey, we could use these to change the prices every time a customer looks at it."

I've worked retail and one of the things that baffled me was just how wasteful price tags were.

They change SO OFTEN and it's so much paper and plastic just tossed it the trash every time. Never even thought about it until I worked at a store and had to change them.

I once worked retail and it was a pain to run around printing labels for hours. Granted, I got paid by the hour, so there were much worse things to do.

I also don't believe this is a nefarious plot, but it does enable dynamic pricing. Stores are creepy these days, they have sensors and network hardware that can track you in the store. They also can do facial recognition.

So they know who you are, where you are / where you went, what you ultimately buy (just enter your rewards number!). So they could literally see someone coming and raise prices on certain items as they enter the store.

Not to say that is a strategy companies are actively employing, but all the pieces are there.

Reference to help you sleep at night: https://documentation.meraki.com/Wireless/Operate_and_Maintain/User_Guides/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Location_Analytics

Actually, they'll start with surprise specials and flash deals, like KMart used to do with their blue light specials. They will use it to discount over-stock as it gets near the sell-by date.
And then, once they've got you used to the prices changing at random times, maybe even getting people to come back in shop in the store more often but offering really great deals (like black Friday started out) . Then they will begin to have "peak pricing", where you pay more on busy days and times.

(In Germany) The legal purchase agreement is made at the register, which means you agree to those prices. The prices on the shelves are technically irrelevant, although if they are intentionally falsified you could sue for deceit or false advertising.
Which is why almost all stores will honour the prices on the shelves, even if they're wrong, and also it's just cheaper to adjust the price than to argue with customers ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Ideally they should keep prices locked for 24 hours between changes

Shame if my trusty thumb tac accidentally pressed into the screen and ruined it

You're at Walmart doing grocery shopping, and you fill your cart with all kinds of foods. Are you going to realize the tomatoes are ringing up at $2.51/lbs when the label was $2.40 in?

I don't think it would be illegal, the price tag is not a contract and it's often mislabeled today. The question is, can you get people to accept that the price will go up or down before you checkout, and will they just pay when it goes up or create a new stock return inventory?

If the chicken you've been walking around the store with went up and you decided you didn't want it anymore, that's straight to the trash. What products will they target with this?

I think it's more likely to go down during the day to compete with other stores than to go up on you, but who knows what these greedy fucks are going to do.

so they are kinda already pulling it online. amazon does it. but like, they let me know when the price of something in my basket changes immediately. big notification.

very different from putting it in your cart and finding out at the checkout. now if you need to make a substitution... godsdammit we gotta go wait in line again? if they do that, they gotta put something on the carts to ding you when something changes or i'll lead the riots myself.

I wonder if they're all wired or run off batteries?

Batteries. Asked my local store manager (aka my wife). She also added that if you have the Walmart app open and can't find an item on the shelf it will light the label up green so you can locate it.

"Food deserts" exist. For some, Walmart is their only grocery store within a reasonable distance.

You, really, cannot fathom why people would shop at Walmart?

Really? You are incapable of critically thinking about it? Unable to understand the world around you to the minimum degree necessary to understand why Walmart exists and thrives?

I highly doubt that, because I doubt you are proud of being ignorant or proud of flaunting anti-Intellectualism.

Pretending we don't know why something is, and being proud to be ignorant, is a form of self defeatism where we hand control to these companies. Who survive on data and knowledge, by denying ourselves the data and knowledge to do something about it and help others do something about it.

Well, I'll tell you why I do.

1. Walmart corporate sucks. Yep. But you know who else sucks? Most other corporations. Walmart is not significantly more evil than the rest.

2. I'm a wheelchair user. I am independent to the point of driving to dialysis, but not grocery shopping. So I use delivery. You know who the only store is that doesn't charge me extra? Walmart.

3. They're not the lowest in price - Aldi and Lidl are - but Walmart is still cheaper than the other mainstream grocery brands, and I'm poor

4. Quality is pretty decent all across the board. Not special or amazing, but pretty solid.

5. They really have their shit together. We just moved and I have InHome now, meaning when I place an order, I get either 9a-12p window or 1p-5p window (my choice), and they bring stuff into the apartment - into the kitchen. Also, I cannot tip, meaning no decision or choice on the matter.

I'm not passionate about Walmart. I wish other stores would get their shit together like them, though, because I'd like to throw my business around. I really wish I had better access to Aldi and Lidl, but I can't pay the inflated instacart/doordash prices for groceries, and I hate instacart grocery shoppers. Nice poeple, but they can never find everything and having to babysit the chat and hope they don't pull nonsense right before checking out so I don't have time to catch them....... it's not been good experiences.

Walmart ain't perfect and it's annoying when they're out of something or they make a mistake, but they fix mistakes, and overall, it's a solid service.

Should anyone else use it? Up to your needs. I'm glad to have it, though.

Is like to point out that the USA is not a reasonably advanced country. It's more like a third world country with a Gucci belt.