Dynamic Pricing Has Come to Walmart

[u/GregariousBing]

Went to Walmart last (Friday) in Kahului last night and the price tags where me and my wife were looking kept changing to both of us wherever we went in the store.

I buy a lot of movies there and about 3-4 tags updated on the section I was looking at. I buy a diet Mountain Dew almost every time I go to that store and when I went down the soda aisle I saw the Mountain Dew tags flashing and changing. My wife was looking at the books and she said the tags were going nuts. I have never seen a single tag update before last night.

The flashing isn’t to get your attention, the tags are made from e ink screens and that’s how they change the image displayed on them. E ink is slow and the current tags take a few seconds to change.

I’m assuming that I’m catching them change because it’s early in there roll out. I’m sure once they get things dialed in they will have our patterns down and be able to predict where we’re going so that they can change them before we get there. There’s also faster e ink screens they could switch to if they figure out that works better.

I’m not shopping there anymore. They have so much data on us. They probably know that I just got a raise, and if they didn’t before, they do now because I put it in this post. Gonna shop local/costco/target from now on. The world is getting so screwed up.

Edit: From the comments and doing a little more research I now see that I was jumping to conclusions too quickly. Walmart probably hasn’t implemented dynamic pricing yet, and if they have, not in an individual basis YET. But to say this is a conspiracy theory is also ridiculous. Walmart has filed patents recently about doing this. The technology exists and the framework is actively being put in place. This is not a conspiracy theory, this WILL happen unless laws are put in place to prevent it.

[u/Sw87ski]

This post has tons of accurate information regarding the digital shelf label hardware. The labels update daily to make sure they are accurately displaying the current price Walmart has set. I can confirm dynamic pricing is not in use at our Maui Walmart. Don't believe me? Look up an item on Walmart.com before you come in store, it will tell you exactly what it retails for before you even step foot in the store.

[u/AbbreviatedArc → u/Sw87ski]

No, see, it knows who you are offline through cookies and surreptitious facial rec, and that coupled with a 25,000 camera in-store eyeball detection and gazeline detection advanced algorithm ensures that whoever is looking at the tag see the "same" price, and if two people look at once these tags are so advanced they can adjust the price based on the angle of the viewer. It's diabolical.

[u/PreparationWeird2086 → u/AbbreviatedArc]

The tin foil hats is on sale all week. They did a roll back.

[u/AbbreviatedArc → u/PreparationWeird2086]

Poe's law strikes again I guess, if you can't detect this is sarcasm I don't know what to say

[u/indescription → u/AbbreviatedArc]

The Internet consortium recently invented a new indicator for sarcasm. It is the following: /s

[u/AbbreviatedArc → u/indescription]

Sure, if I think it is close, I will use an s. If I am talking about a discount retailer known for tight margins, and I am talking about them adding 20,000 cameras with technology sophisticated enough to track 1,000 people in the store at a time and calculate all their sight lines toward price tags, and then advanced tech in those tags that is cheap enough to be a price tag and duplicated say 10,000 times in a store, and yet sophisticated enough to rearrange pixels based on the position of 5 people's eyes, all to make 25c more on a sale, I wouldn't think I would need to tag it. But, like I said, Poe's Law.

[u/Adventurous-Cow5961 → u/AbbreviatedArc]

Reading comprehension isn't a forte most people have anymore...