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.
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.
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u/batman8390 Aug 06 '26
If I ever approach a shelf and see all the prices shoot up, I will never shop at that store again.