Thankfully, Wal-Mart is too fricking cheap to permanently implement something like that. They can’t even keep a stack of handbaskets by the door without all of them getting stolen within a month and take years to replace them, electronic price tags are getting broken and unusable near instantly.
You can break the shelf tag, or it can get broken through use and just never be replaced but it won’t change that the POS system will constantly have its prices at the register (potentially) changed daily/hourly.
A question that might be important though, “Do customers shop based on the price they see on the shelf?” If I want a bag of apples and there isn’t a price tag near enough to the bag of apples that I can tell how much the bag of apples cost, will I still try to buy a bag of apples?
Amazing they didn’t do that earlier. In Rio de Janeiro there’s a vegetables store chain that use that since years ago.
with God’s help we will one day catch up technologically with brazil
I suggest you start with clay filter, trio elétrico, and learning some gambiarras,
Some day all people with shower with electric heaters connected directly to solar panels. For now, we can only pity them (my energy come from hydro I guess, so it’s water being heated by otther water))
some brands of coke machines have had surge pricing ability for at least 30 years. I was told it was usually used to raise prices in between class periods in school machines but none of the ones I ever programmed used the feature just flat rates.
Conservatives when no one takes their guns: “I WILL NOT COMPLY!!!”
Conservatives when food prices increase: “I’m going go keep rewarding these companies and then complain when someone rebels”
electronic price tags are pretty common in German supermarkets already.
Same in the Netherlands. They are pretty much the default really. And while theoretically they can be used for surge pricing, they aren’t. First, that’s a great way to lose all trust your customers have in you and make them go to a different store. Second, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.
On the plus side for you Americans and Canadians, maybe you can finally get rid of that habit of showing product prices excluding tax. There’s no compelling reason for maintaining that if updating your pricetags is a matter of seconds.
Not showing the price with taxes is to make you think the price is lower so that you purchase it. It has nothing to do with speed of changing the tags.
First, that’s a great way to lose all trust your customers have in you and make them go to a different store.
You really need to visit some rural parts of my country to see how they are food deserts only served by predatory companies like Walmart. During the early 00’s it was a common story for Walmart to run local business out of the area due to being able to use economy of scale to drive down prices. Just imagine living in a town where the only place to buy food was Walmart, fast food chains, or dollar stores.
Second, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.
I just looked it up and the Netherlands has Uber unless I have old information. You do know they use surge pricing as their business model right? Companies like Walmart look at these business models and want to transition to them because they work. Its the boil the frog slowly approach to capitalism.
On the plus side for you Americans and Canadians, maybe you can finally get rid of that habit of showing product prices excluding tax.
I am not making excuses only giving an explanation. Please consider I am not defending this in the slightest just giving information. A human worker costs less than a digital tag if they are also paid to organize the shelving and stock. Also consider the United States has taxes that changed on the county and state level. National chains don’t show taxes because you can literally drive 15 minutes and be in a different area with a different sales tax laws. These taxes can range from standard sales tax to a PIF tax that gets added based on a time window. Most of our country does not use electronic tagging and the systems used to update them are not as dynamic as you think when they do have them. This post is an excellent example of this because just think of how big Walmart is in my country. They are just now swapping over to them and only with the idea of changing their pricing model.
Capitalism breeds innovation
maybe someone will innovate a tiny little device I can touch against one of these things and kill it
Theres a tiny little device called screwdriver that may do the trick
Depending on how they’d be mounted to the shelves, small lock jaw pliers could easily be pocketed/palmed and may be small enough to slip one side of the jaws behind the display. Then its just a squeeze to crack the display.
I would shoplift the fuck out of those things and then never get around to reverse engineering them.
Signal jammer if it’s controlled remotely and centrally
Short circuiting if it’s independent. Like a taser.
