182
Walmart says it's not using personal information to set prices as it expands digital shelf labels (apnews.com)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Walmart is aiming to assuage customers’ fears about its new pricing technology as it rolls out digital price labels at its stores.

In a statement posted on the company’s website, Walmart Inc.'s CEO John Furner vowed that the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer isn’t using personal information like income, shopping history or a customer’s willingness to pay to set prices, and it won’t be doing so in the future either.

“We don’t set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won’t,” Furner wrote Friday. “Whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more.”

The pledge from Walmart comes as concerns are mounting from some shoppers, consumer advocates and lawmakers skeptical about the rollout of digital price labels by the discounter and other stores. Digital price labels are rapidly replacing paper shelf tags at U.S. supermarkets and let stores change prices instantly from a central computer instead of having workers swap out paper labels by hand.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 15 points 2 days ago* (3 children)

it would be very difficult to target a specific individual shopper in the store, but trivial to do so online (and they do have some different pricing online vs in store already). their pledge to not do so in store is empty. they weren't gonna do that anyway.

the digital shelf tags allow walmart to do what amounts to 'surge pricing' like uber does during high demand events. like if a blizzard is coming, they can jack the prices up on snow removal equipment, blankets, space heaters, winter clothes, batteries, grocery staples, etc. with just a few clicks or keypresses and without using even a penny's worth of in-store labor to do it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Not particularly difficult. They already have Wi-Fi beacons in every store and I’d bet there’s a good chance they have Bluetooth beacons as well. With either one of those, it wouldn’t be difficult to track an individual’s position in the store with pretty significant granularity. Couple a position plus a unique device ID for the shopper’s phone (or combination of profiles adding in watch, headphones, etc), maybe even some UHF audio signals or additional Bluetooth signal from the price tag (which sounds like it updates wirelessly and therefore provides a whole additional network of location tracking in the store) and you could just about pinpoint where a person is tied with their purchasing history and behavioral analytics in real time.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    The idiocy of people who subscribe to this nonsense should be apparent. MAYBE y ou can track someone to show a price on the shelf, but then you MUST get it 100% right when they check out. In a line. With many other poeple standing around the same area. Can you pinpoint them THAT well?

    Okay, even if you could: Consider how poorly other tech works - people dislike self-checkout because those machines struggle. And you think they're magically gonna be able to pinpoint where you are in the checkout line?

    It doesn't pass the laugh test, but threads like these are FULL of brainless halfwits going "HURR HURR THEY GONNA CHARGE ME DIFFERNT".

    All the tags are for is so they can update the prices LIKE THEY ALREADY DO overnight, but instead of replacing all the paper slips, do it electronically.

    The ONLY thing that they could possibly do that they had not already been able to do is surge pricing, and even then, they can surge prices overnight by replacing the pricing slips........ because especially after all of this hullabaloo, there are people out there taking pictures of prices on shelves to compare to what they're actually charged. So even if they tried to get away with it, they would fail.

    It's just more distraction from real problems like wage theft, facsism, wealth inequality, et cetera. You get angry at problems that cannot actually even be problems and waste all your energy being angry at them instead of doing something about the problems that are REAL and ACTUALLY EXIST.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent