[lesuorac]

I'm not sure dynamic pricing could happen at a grocery store. For their online sales sure but in-person the digital labels show a price and that price needs to match what it does at the register [1] [2]. What are they going to do? Kick everybody out of the store for 30 minutes while they up all the prices?

> Ms. Warren highlighted on social media how digital pricing could enable stores to implement surge pricing, such as increasing the cost of water or ice cream during hot weather or raising turkey prices before Thanksgiving.

The example from the article doesn't even require digital pricing. The weather is a fairly known event day-to-day and the calender even more-so.

As somebody who hoards way to many receipts; prices have been going up even at stores with paper prices (which is like all that I've ever seen).

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/buyer-beware-watchin... [2]: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/consumer-protection/prici....

[popcalc]

They actually do this in Norway. The prices can only go down during the day and reset the next day. They even hire price spotters to watch the prices at competitor chains.

[randomcarbloke]

Why would the register not be relying on the same database as the digital labels? This is how it works at lots of stores in the UK which have digital labels varying the prices day-to-day.

[citrin_ru]

In many countries laws tell that customers cannot be charged more than the price displayed on the label. If the price was X when customers put an item from a shelf to a trolley but synchronously increased on the label and in the database to 2X while a customer was on a way to a till he’ll be asked to pay 2X which may not be legal but even if it is it would cause a backlash.

[BehindBlueEyes]

I've seen some backlash where folks would abandon cart at the till, or ask to remove the item and leave it there at least, causing quite some chaos/delays overall. And that's just user error/misreading a label. Pretty sure if pricing is unpredictable between displays and the till often enough, people will just go shop elsewhere and/or regulation would eventually be created if it doesn't already exist...

The other thing is for folks who can afford to pay more, I'm not sure they even look at the prices on the shelves. I assume they may rather look at the end total and only check individual items if the end bill is abnormally high, in which case if everything was upped a little based on profiling, it might not be noticed unless googled or compared to another store?

I guess those behaviours may not be correlated to income, but all in all I have a hard time imagining this system resulting in either tiny optimizations that may be profitable in agregate or a net loss of clients/sales if it is too noticeable...

[randomcarbloke]

in some countries maybe, I think in some US states? I don't think that is standard though.

This scenario is easily avoided though, change prices once per day, or you could change prices when the store or aisle is empty.

[lesuorac]

I mean there's a bunch of why's. The real world is pretty imperfect.

But anyways, if you add the item to your cart when it's say $1.40 and it becomes $4.40 by the time you get to the register that seems double-non-plus.

[randomcarbloke]

this example is trivially solvable

[BehindBlueEyes]

doesn't sound trivial to me, could you give me examples how?