Electronic price tags are popping up in Canadian grocery stores. Here’s what it means for customers
Electronic price tags are popping up in Canadian grocery stores. Here’s what it means for customers – The Journal
dynamic pricing
barely measurable [to consumers]
/goose meme
If the dynamic pricing is barely noticeable, then why do the stores need it?
If consumers can't opt out of spying and data collection while they are buying food, then these companies shouldn't exist. How unethical do grocery stores have to be before we end their privatization?
How is it legal for a price to be different between when you read the price on the shelf and when they charge you?
It is not legal to charge a different price at the register. Also, it would be quite difficult to ensure the price you pay at the register matches the price you saw on the shelf ten minutes ago.
It's not that granular. They're going to use surge pricing, so when you shop is going to matter a lot. The tag will match the till. Going to buy beer and hot dogs on game day? Surge pricing!
Will it be? It seems pretty easy to choose a transition time ( say an hour even ) and to charge the lowest price in the last 60 minutes.
Does it take more than an hour between pulling something off the shelf and hitting the register?
Anyway, I totally hate it so this is not me defending it.
It would be really hard to guarantee it. There are definitely times it has taken more than an hour to go around the store. It takes at least 45 mins on a normal trip, and the more kids that are with me the longer it takes. You need a lot of groceries when you're eating for 5.
Grocery stores change their store music based on age groups and other characteristics that tend to visit at various times. Here's a mediocre source, I can't find one anymore that called out stores targeting specific demographics of people based on time of day.
So to me personally, I could infer that if they know old people shop on weekday mornings and young people on weekday nights and weekends, then fiddling around with the price every hour based on perceived ability-to-pay may amount to price-discrimination by age group, gender or ethnicity.
They are already using them in Italy but the prices are not dynamic, mostly because they are forced to mark the date in which the price is valid. They also have to respect prices in printed documents (like catalogs or flyers) so it's virtually impossible to change prices on the go.
I used to work nights at a Loblaws grocery store
Thursday was price update day and I would spend the whole shift printing stacks of paper labels then walk the aisles updating them.
The digital tags would save a lot of money and paper.
Ive seen the tags, but pretty sure dynamic pricing breaks the law.
Well it's time to get a faraday bag for my phone.
The ones that I have seen still need someone to go and change he price they don't have power.
This is just discrimination. They're trying to figure out how to squeeze every last cent out of our pockets. They've already squeezed us as it is! If I can, I'll avoid any place that does this.
I wonder how difficult it'll be to mess with them. Can they be hacked? How easy can they be broken?
Edit: Actually, the only way I would accept this is if they had a database online where everyone could scan and scrape the data. If it was constantly being analyzed and they could prove they weren't screwing people, then sure, why not. It actually might convince me to shop there more if that were the case. That would probably be more fair than what they do now. As it stands, it's not like we can see how they change prices day to day all that efficiently. But I could see how they could use these to abuse prices a ton.
Excuse me?! Go back to Dimension X, you Lizard-person
What happened to Canada having the most robust privacy protections?!
I'm sorry, what?? We have privacy protections?
That was never a thing, we have the most technologically ignorant government around. At least the US government can use privacy violation for their own gain.