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.
Yes, this is regularly seen throughout Europe for years.
You can buy such tags in bulk from China, they are very cheap at any scale really (and their use isn’t limited to just pricing).
But yes, I think some EU countries already have laws preventing price changes throughout the day or (to some extend) price differences between eg countryside and cities.
I think there should be an EU directive for this tho.
They’re already widely adopted in supermarkets here (Germany).
That would also explain why Aldi in the UK also has these while other stores don’t.
Seems the two German supermarket chains really like to have the same infrastructure everywhere. Everywhere I go the Aldis look exactly the same. They have slightly different products depending on the country. But the price tags, interior, … is basically the same. Okay and we don’t have “Flaschenpfand” everywhere… (deposit on the plastic bottles and the machines where you can return bottles.) I bet all of this makes it a lot easier for their techs and management. And it could also explain why they sometimes redo a store that still looks fine and fit it with the latest shenanigans.
And as an aside: I’ve shopped in the first Aldi store ever. It’s not far from where I live.
