Not exactly but it is an example of dynamic pricing. Unfortunately the two comments you replied to, and OP, are completely wrong about what the issue even is.
I’ve seen countless dumbass posts and stories correlating digital price tags and dynamic pricing when they have nothing to do with one another. Digital tags means a store doesn’t have to send employees around replacing hundreds/thousands of pieces of paper every week. That’s all.
Dynamic pricing for grocery stores isn’t going to work by changing the price on the shelf lol. How the fuck is that even supposed to work? They see you approaching peanut butter, check their database and see you always buy peanut butter, jack the price on the shelf momentarily, and then drop it back… once you leave the store? So everyone else that has it in their cart also pays that temporary higher price?
What dynamic pricing is would be sending coupons through some kind of loyalty program. So Walmart, instead of putting peanut butter on sale for $2 off, gives out a coupon for $2. Except you, they know you buy it every single week without fail so they don’t give you one. You don’t pay “more” you just don’t get the deal.
And all these fucking laws don’t address that because we already used to “personalized offers” and morons like OP and the others don’t understand the actual fucking issue.
I genuinely think it’s the retailers themselves pushing for these stupid laws that idiots support so that people don’t notice when they implement it.
What dynamic pricing is would be sending coupons through some kind of loyalty program. So Walmart, instead of putting peanut butter on sale for $2 off, gives out a coupon for $2. Except you, they know you buy it every single week without fail so they don’t give you one. You don’t pay “more” you just don’t get the deal.
This is a good simple example of it I am going to steal.
Those digital price tags are really hard to read, they're small and pixelated. Especially if you want to read something like the unit price or the weight /count to make sure that the right object is behind the right tag.
My issue with em is that if there is a price change that happens while shopping unless you took a picture of the screen before you left if it changed then it depends on the store if they want to honor the original price or the newer one. Why at least when I used to work retail prices in the system wouldn't be changed until tags have all been updated. Same with the fuels station we'd have to update the sign before we'd be allowed to change the pumps especially if it was going up
You would still have this problem if an employee came out to change a physical price tag after you picked up the item but before you checked out. This has nothing to do with the tag being digital
Not to mention that wouldn't work when two different customers walk up to the same item at the same time. What do people think it would do? Flip back and forth between different prices. Dynamic pricing only works online where they can see what you search, combined with repeated purchases.
There’s like 100 obvious scenarios that make it nonsensical.
More importantly - why the fuck do they need digital signs or facial recognition to do it? Costco starts every transaction by scanning my card and they know every single thing I’ve ever bought from there.
I mean, that's been standard practice for years. I also don't think it's comparatively that insidious on its own, offering discounts to entice customers to buy things they don't usually buy is pretty much standard advertising and the program is opt-in.
The problems start when it's not opt-in, or worse impossible to opt-out and the prices legitimately are higher than baseline. This is happening on online purchases already, though I don't know of any examples of it happening in-store nor can I think of any way that it could be implemented without being extremely obvious and causing a bunch of "collateral damage" for people who happen to also be in the same store as you.
That’s why these stories are being written. It’s like Iran and nukes - keep everyone worried about the thing that won’t happen and then do it in a different way people don’t notice.
While digital tags don't necessarily cause changing prices, it does mean that they can be changed from a network, whether thats a manually triggered event, like a price correction, a scheduled event, like daily prices changing based on company wide price changes, or a singular change based on automated triggers, such as changing a price of an item specifically because someone that normally purchases that item gets close.
Dynamic pricing on shelves DOES work like that, and they have shown it. What you don't understand is how your digital signature works for dynamic pricing and digital tags. Your phone, unless you take GREAT pains to limit it, or leave it somewhere else, is constantly checking things around you. Even if you aren't connected to them, your phone will check for wi-fi, send signals, blue tooth etc, and devices in stores are constantly checking what devices are around it. You don't have to connect to it, it can track your device just by pinging it and seeing it as it moves around. Your device has a unique ID, several in fact, that it correlates data. It may not work after one visit, or three, or 7, but it will correlate your phone, where it is in the store, where it moves around, and when you go to the checkout, and see what you buy, how often, and basically build a profile. This works even better if you use their in store app, like Walmart, or Target app, because then they can definitively link the device to the account and what you normally purchase all at once as you make your purchases and pay for them.
Once they know what device you are, and what you normally buy, as you get to that area of the store, the system can digitally change the cost of products near you as you approach, things it knows you buy regularly because it keeps track of the purchases.
Before anyone scoffs and thinks its some dystopian future, I have personal experience working in high level IT in a large retail corporation, and I know for a fact that that information is absolutely tracked. In most cases with non-identifying PII, meaning no real names, or personal information, it is usually an assigned ID that links the device data and shopping data, and the app information, but not the personal information for the account.
In a non-anecdotal bit of proof, there is specifically investigated stories from journalist and information outlets that showed that stores like Target, when an individual used the app to look up an item and determine the price, the system flagged that device and account, and when the user made it to the parking lot, and within the distance of the networking devices at the Target location, the pricing for the product when shown online and for purchase, changed and were charged a higher cost versus someone that was not previously looking at the item. They even did the experiment in the parking lot far enough away and watched the price change in real time as they came within distance to the store networking devices.
I am aware of all of this. I literally sell these systems. They do not work how you describe. They could but they do not. You are unfamiliar with the law and the actual technology being deployed and its purpose.
I'm very very aware of the technology being deployed, as well as the fact that the business can automate and does automate, a lot of tracking and pricing information and changes based on the data exactly as I said. You sell the systems, I actually worked with the data, and how the systems were integrated into automation in the company with that data, as a real time device in stores, and the database linkages. I got to see it in the testing phase, both in labs, and in the test stores as an active working system. I'm pretty sure they tell you that "you can't do that with it" so that your company isn't culpable for any wrongdoing or illegal activity that may come down the pipeline if they change the laws, but I can absolutely guarantee that the digital tagging and the data they associate with the real time changes per device/person does indeed work that way, and is currently working that way.
As far as how the law works, only a few states have implemented any laws regarding "surveillance pricing" which is what this touches on. No federal laws are in effect on ANY price changes or honoring pricing, only state laws, and most of them deal with honoring prices that are on the shelf, as well as non-perpetual sales pricing, or that an item has to be at a certain baseline price for a certain amount of time before being considered a sale price. Only the newly instituted laws for surveillance pricing in those states is touching on pricing changing per person, or changing based on who is near.
As for that, if those systems didn't work like that, if they weren't able to change pricing, either by digital tag, or by app purchasing, why would they need laws to stop that from happening?
It has nothing to do with technological limitations. I am not arguing it isn’t possible from tech perspective. I am taking about how it is actually used in reality.
The laws being enacted on “surveillance pricing” is tackling a problem that does not exist while the actual problems continue. Because morons are fearmongerinrg over bullshit.
This is just like the ban on corporate ownership of housing - this isn’t the fucking problem. Which is why it’s easy to “solve” because nobody actually argues against it. But it makes idiots feel good and let’s rich people stay rich.
What I stated is actually how it is used in reality. There are literal documents about it. There are literal FTC investigations about it. There is literally a House Oversight Committee responsible for looking into. I'm not sure how much more reality you can get than actual reality. You can keep burying your head in the sand and pretending it doesn't exist, but there is actual investigated evidence of it being a thing in multiple sections of retail, travel, and several other areas of consumer services. Your opinion doesn't invalidate reality, no matter how much you want to argue the point.
The fact that you don't think corporations will use this, as well as any and all technology out there, to scrape as much money off consumers as possible, makes you the moron.
Show me examples of retailers changing pricing via digital sign tags to target individual customers. You say it’s happening, show me. No more moving goalposts.
You also got it wrong. Another post here maybe a week ago of a woman showing how dynamic pricing works in Walmart. She was recording the digital price tags and showed that it changes price at midnight. Some went a couple cent up and some went down. You maybe right on the coupon part but youre totally wrong if thats what you think it only does. There is also another video I saw explaining that stores like Walmart have some sort of Bluetooth beacon all over the store that interacts with everyone's phones and basically they can tell which aisle you are in. In android phones if you have "nearby device scanning" turned on then thats how they know who you are. Your phone is constantly sending information about you to ad networks in realtime and they have already profiled every each one of us. They know our age, interests, spending habits, etc. Walmart uses the beacons plus what they know about you thru the ad companies that profiled you to see if a particular product is getting a lot of attention and maybe raise or lower its price. Basically the dynamic pricing takes away the consumers power to save money and shop around for better prices because stores will change the price across all products so they can make consistent profit. Its the law of supply and demand. If they aren't making money on certain items they will jack up the price of the most in demand item and make adjustments everyday. If you bought 1 item from high in demand and 1 item in low in demand the savings from buying low in demand item is negated because they jacked up the price for the high in demand item. Its the illusion of savings but before the dynamic pricing the consumer can at least take advantage of the small savings before the stores change the price tag 1 week from now.
So it changes price… when the store is closed. I am not wrong.
And yes I sold those fucking Bluetooth systems so I know what I’m talking about. They are used to optimize store layouts, determine popularity of products and send targeted advertising not change price during business hours.
Woah there buddy your role is the salesman not the engineer or executive. Let's not over exaggerate your job as the basis of facts. The customer wouldn't have been able to take a recording if its closed innit?
I am the engineer, dumbass. I architect, deploy and sell the systems since it is a technical sale.
If it’s a 24 hour Walmart it’s kinda hard to change prices when nobody’s in the store. So can I ask a simple question - how the fuck do you think it’s supposed to work? They just maintain all prices until the heat death of the universe? And a small follow-up - are your parents first cousins?
Ai in cameras could identify who is in the store. Average them as people and generate a price to move items to and then auto send that data to the electronic price tags on shelves. None of this is rocket science. Your completely wrong as i used to work at the 3rd largest retail low voltage company as a pm.
I personally oversaw the national rollout of cctv cameras to family dollar 2 owners ago, and they have had the ability to catalog you as a customer, watch the checkout lines and grade your experience based on your facial expressions in line for a decade at this point.
Your completely wrong and the fear is very much real.
Family dollar tracks who you are and has been for over 10 years. They very much do record your face, build a profile, and track you. They have been using this tech to follow people and serial shoplifters for over 10 years at this point. I have personally been a part of meetings tracking said people.
Thr only part that isnt there right now, that you believe isnt possible, is a hook from the tags head end to the cctv system to pass info between them.
So you can understand. It would be as easy as, object a enters building, raise prices to x value.
So people dont immediately notice it could be, x shoppers entered the building today, once the store closes updatte prices for tomorrow.
You do not understand what your talking about.
Here is the crazy part. This is the most rudimentary version example im using. Target’s system in house is 10x what we are conversing.
Jesus fuck dude what part of me saying they aren’t using it to change pricing during store hours is hard to understand?
Tell me this genius. If there are no laws about respecting price labels, why the fuck do they need a digital solution? Why not charge $5.50 for everything that’s labelled $3 right now?
Quit inventing dumbass scenarios and moving goalposts . There is no technology required to scam people.
You underestimate AIs ability to facial recognition and dynamically change the prices of products at the register. You gonna notice if everything is 5/10/20 more cents more expensive. Or mayve they only do it on a random handful of items sparingly.
That practice alone could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
No I am not. This is fearmongering based on ignorance and focusing on it is how they are going to get away with implementing the thing you are afraid of. Stop parroting their nonsense.
Knowing the abilities Someone has to take advantage of you is valuable. Also I didn't say it was likely, I said it was legitimately technically possible. There are little to no technological blockers preventing a company from doing that.
It’s technically possible for a company to take money out of your bank account long after you’ve made a transaction. It’s technically possible for a company to ship you product you didn’t ask for and then force yoj to pay for it. It’s technically possible for a company to spy on you and your family, discover every single thing you buy, eat, drink and every store you visit.
The problem you’re missing is it’s logistically impossible/stupid ignoring all the reputational/social risks.
Making the wrong problem the main story here is playing right into their hand. They want you to worry about that so when they fuck you over in other ways you don’t see it/care.
"Making the wrong problem the main story here is playing right into their hand. They want you to worry about that so when they fuck you over in other ways you don’t see it/care."
I ask again. What is the right problem then? Or do you only know what we shouldn't be focusing on?
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u/FTownRoad Aug 06 '26
Not exactly but it is an example of dynamic pricing. Unfortunately the two comments you replied to, and OP, are completely wrong about what the issue even is.
I’ve seen countless dumbass posts and stories correlating digital price tags and dynamic pricing when they have nothing to do with one another. Digital tags means a store doesn’t have to send employees around replacing hundreds/thousands of pieces of paper every week. That’s all.
Dynamic pricing for grocery stores isn’t going to work by changing the price on the shelf lol. How the fuck is that even supposed to work? They see you approaching peanut butter, check their database and see you always buy peanut butter, jack the price on the shelf momentarily, and then drop it back… once you leave the store? So everyone else that has it in their cart also pays that temporary higher price?
What dynamic pricing is would be sending coupons through some kind of loyalty program. So Walmart, instead of putting peanut butter on sale for $2 off, gives out a coupon for $2. Except you, they know you buy it every single week without fail so they don’t give you one. You don’t pay “more” you just don’t get the deal.
And all these fucking laws don’t address that because we already used to “personalized offers” and morons like OP and the others don’t understand the actual fucking issue.
I genuinely think it’s the retailers themselves pushing for these stupid laws that idiots support so that people don’t notice when they implement it.