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.

  • smeg@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    Isn’t the real use case just so they don’t have to waste staff time changing labels manually when stock changes or moves?

    • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      This way they can spend more time rearranging the store so nobody knows where anything is, in turn making us walk past a bunch of stuff we don’t need in an effort to try and induce an impulse purchase!

      Efficiency!

      • smeg@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        A bit of that, but hopefully if they piss off too many people they’ll just go elsewhere

      • Radiant_sir_radiant@beehaw.org
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        4 months ago

        I offer you a third option: at least one Lidl in Croatia uses blinking tags for stuff they really want you to look at.

        Sometime soon we’re gonna have to invent a spam filter for real life. Hey, maybe that’s the use case that the Vision guys at Apple have been looking for?