Late Stage Capitalism

Electronic labels aren't the issue then, lack of oversight and consumer protection is.

And, of course, the obscene imperative to make ever more profit, human cost be damned.

Then, you can offload the management of this service to a third party, which sounds daft at first, but this provides deniability when it comes to price fixing

That's already happening. I've seen a few news stories investigating surge pricing through Instacart. Both Instacart and the stores, like Target, deny being responsible for the dynamic pricing

The prices are even based on the individual user. One person will be given a higher price for the exact same loaf of bread because the algorithm determines they'd be more likely to pay it. It'll be interesting to see the effect that has on labor force morale. What's the point of "working hard"* to earn more money if you're just going to be charged more for things?

*Adding quotes and an asterisk to working hard because in many cases hard work isn't what earns you more money. The hardest I've ever worked was in kitchens for near minimum wage

I agree. And it's not just the public as a whole. My local news ran a story about how they're going to be doing this on an individual level. The example they used was for fast food, but it would apply for what they're doing in grocery stores as well. The example was a woman pulls up to a fast food chain with her children and their friends in the car. They order and the price is significantly increased because the AI has identified that she does this once a week on that particular day and realizes that she's going to be willing to pay it. And then the car behind her pulls up, and they could order the same exact thing that she ordered, but they would get it for a lower price.

Individualized price surging is the fresh hell that's even worse than applying it on the whole to a larger population.

Source? You owe me 20min reading about cartoon mice btw :p hehe Disney is a big rabbit hole

In Paris, it’s not unusual to see visitors strolling through Disneyland Paris with McDonald’s bags in hand. In California and Florida, Disney parks explicitly allow guests to bring in outside food and nonalcoholic drinks, as long as certain guidelines are followed.

^- https://www.disneydining.com/disney-parks-explain-enforcement-of-food-and-drink-ban-cj1/

Didn’t see collapsing lady, water should be fine, thankfully!!

How were the energy drinks the cheapest? When it comes to non-alcoholic drinks aren't they usually among the most expensive?

almost as if it requires zero human labor! I wonder if labor cost savings will happen? Think of the profit margins right there for the taking! Certainly this benefits the worker, yes? The one that isn't laid off, sure.

Not only a time saver so employees can actually be available to help customers and restock shelves, but also so much less waste created. I worked for a company that had paper tags a long time ago and we threw away so much trash every week for price changes, sometimes daily. Even if the prices didn’t change, we still had to print and put out updated tags because of expiration dates. I often would wish we had digital tags.

The amount of trash not being wasted is amazing.

My hypothesis is that finding out your special circle of hell isn't special, is part of the hellscape experience.

Every time I've worked with a customer wanting to do digital pricing labels, the end goal is what we would now call surge or adaptive pricing

That's because of understaffing.

This means nobody has time for micro-optimisations like that.

That’s the point of electronic tags. Nobody has to change it. There’s an algorithm—excuse me—‘AI’ that calculates and updates the prices.

I would agree it’s going to cause all sorts problems if they try to do this more frequently than daily. The only people that won’t notice a price change from the time it goes into the cart to the register are rich people. The average customer has limited funds and pays attention.

Algorithmic pricing in grocery stores has been a thing for at least a few decades, though the specific name it went by has changed a lot.

I'd say it began with data collection via those club/loyalty cards, which offered extremely granular transaction data. Around the mid 2010s, "analytics" for FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) were already commonplace to not only track, but to "nudge" you into purchases you wouldn't otherwise, e.g. via notifications or coupons.

This infrastructure which harvests and influences people on such a large scale is arguably the most valuable asset of retailers. It's basically what Big Tech does, after all.

Algorithmic pricing in supermarkets is newer, but Consumer reports has already caught InstaAI pricing fixing for months now.

Exclusive: Instacart’s AI Pricing May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill - Consumer Reports - https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-practices/instacart-ai-pricing-experiment-inflating-grocery-bills-a1142182490/

The world has changed a lot since you were a kid. Pricing is done completely differently now

Algorithmic pricing is already here if you're purchasing through Instacart, and some stores are now directly doing it through their app. Prices are adjusted per customer, meaning you and I may be charged different prices for the exact same product simply because the algorithm determined you would be more willing to pay a higher price than me

Within a decade, that may be the universal shopping experience

Right, and they're going to do this daily, or even multiple times per day? Not a chance without digital pricing.

Digital pricing also changes in an instant, leaving customers little or no recourse. Personally if I saw someone manually marking up an item I intended to buy by a couple dollars, I wouldn't buy that item and maybe wouldn't revisit the store.

Unfortunately it’s not like laws matter anymore.