E-ink price tags are not uncommon. Technology to track individual customers through the store based on smartphone RF is already deployed in many supermarkets. Some stores even do scan-as-you-shop, where the customer scans the item at the shelf, rather than at the front of the store. There are certainly a lot of i's to dot and t's to cross, but it's hardly a theoretical impossibility - find the right store and you could do it today with no more than a software update.

▲

crazygringo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I still don't understand how that would work. Yes, e-ink is great for updating prices, I welcome it at grocery stores.

But if both me and another person are standing in front of the prosciutto and cured meats fridge, we're seeing the same prices, even if I'm poor and they're rich.

▲

svachalek 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think they're conflating/confusing a bunch of different things here. E-ink tags let stores run sales more often, offer "happy hour" time of day discounts, etc. It's not so much individualized (other than probably some demographic targeting, like raising prices 5-6 pm when well employed people are picking stuff up on the way home).

The personalized pricing is usually by having everyone pay through an app. The app knows your buying history and tracks everything you do so they can fine tune their deals for you, surfacing discounts on things that pull you into the store, running e-coupons when it knows you're price conscious, etc. etc.

Both systems are fair on the surface but exploit the asymmetry of billion dollar information systems vs the average consumer. All of these tweaks ensure they get the maximum amount of money that they can out of their customer base which means on average everyone ends up paying more, all while being very hard to point to exactly how you got screwed.

▲

t-3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my state there are laws requiring the price charged at the register to mark what's displayed on the shelf, with the store paying a penalty (price * some multiplier) to a customer who has been charged more than the displayed price. If the prices were constantly changing there would definitely be some people trying to game the system or suing because they feel the store had been doing something unfair. I can't see automatic price gouging working out in a physical store at all.

▲

etchalon 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They just get rid of the prices on the shelves.

▲

dTal 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well that's easy enough - don't apply sneaky pricing when there's two people looking.

	▲	akramachamarei 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This arms race accelerates quickly. The question becomes stopping someone observing from a distance. It would have to be very tight to go unnoticed, and it seems likely to me that when detected it would quickly become a costly PR SNAFU, in addition to the cost of all the tech you need to deploy. I'd guess that grocers have little disposable capital anyway, given how low profits tend to be.