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A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels (www.npr.org)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. 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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I get the convenience part so the staff doesn't have to go around do it by hand, but it just seems infeasible to do it for the other examples mentioned.

E.g. you go in, pick up item listed for $10, finish shopping in 20 mins, item now costs $15 at till.. probably leave it (so now the staff has to re-shelf it) and start shopping at a place that is not trying to scam you.

For the other example, if there are a few packs of something expiring and they reduce the price for all the items on the shelf, everyone will just take the ones which have a reasonable shelf life left leaving the expiring ones.

Both of these just seem stupid.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Easy legislative fix. If the price is changed after the customer picked it up but before they checkout, store must refund item 1000x.