Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.

“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there’s something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.

  • Frisbeedude@sopuli.xyz
    74·
    5 months ago

    If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream.

    Exploiting human suffering for profit. We will all burn with a smile on our faces and a semi-cold water for the price of a small car in our hands.

    • Truck_kun@beehaw.orgEnglish
      35·
      5 months ago

      All companies that plan to have dynamic pricing, please let me know.

      I’ve already stopped going to Wendy’s; I’d love to add you to the list of places never to patron again.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          7·
          4 months ago

          You can just assume it is every US company because it is.

          This stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

          CEOs talk to each other about this kind of shit and plan together.

          Just like how “AI” has been shoved into fucking everything by everyone even though it is useless and makes a lot of people upset.

          Expect all of them to do it so you don’t have a choice and they all did it to “stay competitive with each other.”

          Making sure there isn’t another option is one hundred percent part of industry plans.

          Just like how trying to replace fast food workers with automation and touch screens has been in the works since the 80’s at least. The tech is just finally cheap enough is all.

          • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
            3·
            4 months ago

            They actually use consultants like McKinley, who are the coordinating force behind a lot of the obviously self-destructive decisions companies are making in lockstep

        • Truck_kun@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          I have no actual list outside my head.

          atm, Wendy’s because of their plan for dynamic pricing based on how busy they are, and ‘my local KFC’, because in 2017 I had to wait 50 minutes for my order (for 2), and they gave away the last of something I ordered to someone who came in like half an hour later, and they weren’t going to be making more. (that and KFC is way over priced for their standard menu if you aren’t getting some kind of ‘deal’)

    • dudeami0@lemmy.dudeami.win
      15·
      5 months ago

      Semi-cold? That’s extra, you’ll be lucky to afford it. The affordable water been sitting out on the pavement for a few weeks.

    • rwhitisissle@beehaw.org
      7·
      4 months ago

      I love how reality manages to combine the most comically exploitative parts of cyberpunk fiction with literally none of the intense, vibrant, or interesting parts. It’s just a dull, gray, sexless, post-industrial dystopia with ugly cars, chronic obesity, and fentanyl addiction. And now surge pricing.