It still somehow breaks my intuition that it’s cost-effective to have thousands of these deployed in each supermarket. I mean, I do understand it rationally, but it’s still weird.
The extra cost of these tags is easily offset by the money you save on employees having to regularly update paper tags (especially in Belgium where labour costs are very high).
Supermarkets already have inventory robots (look for the high-contrast markers around the store), and shelf-stocking robots are on the way. It makes sense that the next step is to eliminate another human job and give it to the robots you already have running around the store.
I know walmart trialed inventory robot but killed the program as being impractical, and many stores quit using the automation of their floor cleaners as they would get stuck in random place when cleaning the floors at night because pallets where in their way and they didn't know how to navigate around, they also needed the floor plan updated anytime a new floor display was put in. don't count the humans out yet.
I imagine most stores would not change prices during business hours. For 24-hr stores, just do it at like 3am or something, those handful of customers won’t mind.