Demand/Surge pricing coming to supermarkets soon
Discussion
The price of the item will de displayed next to the item on the shelf. The item will carry a barcode to identify it. When scanned, the correct "current" price will be used.
I imagine you could pick up an item with an acceptable price and the price could be "updated" while your walking to the till and you could be charged more ?
More and more people are self scanning stuff as they put it into the trolley. Maybe no more tills in the future ?
Lots to think about.
I imagine you could pick up an item with an acceptable price and the price could be "updated" while your walking to the till and you could be charged more ?
More and more people are self scanning stuff as they put it into the trolley. Maybe no more tills in the future ?
Lots to think about.
First off an apology - my reply will feel like water on the fire, rather than the frothing petrol which seems to be liberally being spread about in this thread.
A few facts:
1. The primary driver for electronic shelf edge labels is labour cost saving. The amount of manual labour to print and distribute the labels is huge. It takes many hours for each store. Multiply this by 3,000+ stores and it adds up to a lot of £millions. Plus of course you have the cost and space of the printers.
2. A further driver for it is promotion management. Because of the volume of labour needed to change SELs and POS banners, stores have a fairly rigid promo calendar (Tesco promos run Wednesday to Wednesday for example). Electronic tickets would make promo starts and ends more flexible.
3. Another benefit will be regulatory. Mis-pricing comes with a lot of reputational loss and potential fines. Trading Standards take a very dim view of mis-pricing, even accidental. And supermarkets are fearful of watchdog fines.
As to the issue of basket re-pricing - I have never ever seen this, so not sure why people are making a point about it.
A few facts:
1. The primary driver for electronic shelf edge labels is labour cost saving. The amount of manual labour to print and distribute the labels is huge. It takes many hours for each store. Multiply this by 3,000+ stores and it adds up to a lot of £millions. Plus of course you have the cost and space of the printers.
2. A further driver for it is promotion management. Because of the volume of labour needed to change SELs and POS banners, stores have a fairly rigid promo calendar (Tesco promos run Wednesday to Wednesday for example). Electronic tickets would make promo starts and ends more flexible.
3. Another benefit will be regulatory. Mis-pricing comes with a lot of reputational loss and potential fines. Trading Standards take a very dim view of mis-pricing, even accidental. And supermarkets are fearful of watchdog fines.
As to the issue of basket re-pricing - I have never ever seen this, so not sure why people are making a point about it.
Otispunkmeyer said:
Im sure I have been to stores in the US where they had electronic price tags on the shelves. I don't think they were updated wirelessly on the fly mind, more some one with the hand held device IR blasting a new price as they go along the aisle re-pricing.
That will never get hacked......Otispunkmeyer said:
Im sure I have been to stores in the US where they had electronic price tags on the shelves. I don't think they were updated wirelessly on the fly mind, more some one with the hand held device IR blasting a new price as they go along the aisle re-pricing.
Common in France.FiF said:
If adopted widely won't it ultimately make it more difficult to keep track of prices and thus hinder shipping around?
Yup. Markets only operate efficiently if there is price transparency. If super markets were to start changing items' prices significantly throughout the day it would certainly make it even harder to accurately compare prices and would be a good opportunity to inflate prices.The number of times you'll see one bin of thingies priced per item, next to another bin of very similar thingies priced per 100g ... well, you'd almost think they were actively trying to make it hard to make value judgments.
In my view supermarkets are trying to sell to and price for 3 broad types of customers, a) price sensitive customers, b) convenience driven customers and c) quality / status conscious customers.
Introduction of pricing system which, according to the article linked in the OP, can changes prices several times a day sometimes by significant percentages. This would make it very difficult, even with price comparison apps and social media for customers in category a) those where the lowest price is THE most important factor. They may be working to a very tight budget or simply be bargain hunters, but life for type a) will be more difficult.
By definition customers in groups b) and c) are not price sensitive and are prepared to pay higher prices to satisfy their needs.
Thus the supermarkets are trying to use a strategy which can be regarded as a value pricing strategy, taking a cynical line setting a price according to the perceived value to the non price sensitive customer and not related to cost or historical prices, essentially squeezing as much as the customer can afford.
In a way it's like the double glazing salesman who prices the quote not according any price list but accordin to what he thinks you can afford, e.g. what price do I have to say for you to sign up today.
Essentially completely not convinced about the 'it's about saving waste" argument , and not terribly convinced about saving costs scenario. Let's face it a couple of part timers, or going overboard four of them, cost what 30k between them, could kill proper price displays and promotions. Saving on printing price stickers? Sod off, just risible.
Introduction of pricing system which, according to the article linked in the OP, can changes prices several times a day sometimes by significant percentages. This would make it very difficult, even with price comparison apps and social media for customers in category a) those where the lowest price is THE most important factor. They may be working to a very tight budget or simply be bargain hunters, but life for type a) will be more difficult.
By definition customers in groups b) and c) are not price sensitive and are prepared to pay higher prices to satisfy their needs.
Thus the supermarkets are trying to use a strategy which can be regarded as a value pricing strategy, taking a cynical line setting a price according to the perceived value to the non price sensitive customer and not related to cost or historical prices, essentially squeezing as much as the customer can afford.
In a way it's like the double glazing salesman who prices the quote not according any price list but accordin to what he thinks you can afford, e.g. what price do I have to say for you to sign up today.
Essentially completely not convinced about the 'it's about saving waste" argument , and not terribly convinced about saving costs scenario. Let's face it a couple of part timers, or going overboard four of them, cost what 30k between them, could kill proper price displays and promotions. Saving on printing price stickers? Sod off, just risible.
FiF said:
Essentially completely not convinced about the 'it's about saving waste" argument , and not terribly convinced about saving costs scenario. Let's face it a couple of part timers, or going overboard four of them, cost what 30k between them, could kill proper price displays and promotions. Saving on printing price stickers? Sod off, just risible.
Ah but what about the cost and space of the printers? 
oyster said:
A few facts:
1. The primary driver for electronic shelf edge labels is labour cost saving. The amount of manual labour to print and distribute the labels is huge. It takes many hours for each store. Multiply this by 3,000+ stores and it adds up to a lot of £millions. Plus of course you have the cost and space of the printers.
This got me thinking.1. The primary driver for electronic shelf edge labels is labour cost saving. The amount of manual labour to print and distribute the labels is huge. It takes many hours for each store. Multiply this by 3,000+ stores and it adds up to a lot of £millions. Plus of course you have the cost and space of the printers.
Tills link to central system to access the price of the scanned item.
Surely the technology must exit to have a digital price on shelves that can be updated from a central system?
FiF said:
Essentially completely not convinced about the 'it's about saving waste" argument , and not terribly convinced about saving costs scenario. Let's face it a couple of part timers, or going overboard four of them, cost what 30k between them, could kill proper price displays and promotions. Saving on printing price stickers? Sod off, just risible.
30k across the 3,500 stores (of varying sizes so not exact) is a 100+million saving. Those sorts of numbers aren't going to be ignored. London424 said:
FiF said:
Essentially completely not convinced about the 'it's about saving waste" argument , and not terribly convinced about saving costs scenario. Let's face it a couple of part timers, or going overboard four of them, cost what 30k between them, could kill proper price displays and promotions. Saving on printing price stickers? Sod off, just risible.
30k across the 3,500 stores (of varying sizes so not exact) is a 100+million saving. Those sorts of numbers aren't going to be ignored. FiF said:
FiF said:
If adopted widely won't it ultimately make it more difficult to keep track of prices and thus hinder shopping around?
Hmm, speckled Jim, your post to which this was a reply has now been deleted. Firstly that will teach me to quote stuff and not care if it ends up as a quote fest, and secondly I'm going to take it that by deleting the post you've accepted that your argument was a bit rubbish. Poor form.Going to have to agree to disagree on this. Yes it could make for less waste on product, but seeing how my local lot price end of date stuff the discounts aren't going to be enough to persuade me to shift some old and crappy stocks off their shelves.
I can see how price shifts in the other direction will make me go elsewhere though.
It will hinder price checking, yes. but the biggest risk for the big supermarkets is narking their loyal customers - there are hundreds of tricks they choose not to play to avoid pissing us off.
All their branding advertising is about being our friend.
ETA - my post quoting you at 22:57 is still there from my view. Do you mean that one?
SpeckledJim said:
FiF said:
FiF said:
If adopted widely won't it ultimately make it more difficult to keep track of prices and thus hinder shopping around?
Hmm, speckled Jim, your post to which this was a reply has now been deleted. Firstly that will teach me to quote stuff and not care if it ends up as a quote fest, and secondly I'm going to take it that by deleting the post you've accepted that your argument was a bit rubbish. Poor form.Going to have to agree to disagree on this. Yes it could make for less waste on product, but seeing how my local lot price end of date stuff the discounts aren't going to be enough to persuade me to shift some old and crappy stocks off their shelves.
I can see how price shifts in the other direction will make me go elsewhere though.
It will hinder price checking, yes. but the biggest risk for the big supermarkets is narking their loyal customers - there are hundreds of tricks they choose not to play to avoid pissing us off.
All their branding advertising is about being our friend.
ETA - my post quoting you at 22:57 is still there from my view. Do you mean that one?
At least we're agreed that it will make price comparisons more difficult. This will make life more difficult for the price conscious shopper referred to earlier, whether they are on a strict budget or simply bargain hunters.
It's a good job they don't deploy the "hundreds of tricks they choose not to play to avoid pissing us off," as the ones they do play certainly piss me off at times. A few mentioned on this thread already.
FiF said:
London424 said:
FiF said:
Essentially completely not convinced about the 'it's about saving waste" argument , and not terribly convinced about saving costs scenario. Let's face it a couple of part timers, or going overboard four of them, cost what 30k between them, could kill proper price displays and promotions. Saving on printing price stickers? Sod off, just risible.
30k across the 3,500 stores (of varying sizes so not exact) is a 100+million saving. Those sorts of numbers aren't going to be ignored. Large store estates are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to how agile they are, this will go some way to addressing this.
oyster said:
As to the issue of basket re-pricing - I have never ever seen this, so not sure why people are making a point about it.
Maybe because it hasn't happened yet? I know of no store that changes its prices regularly during the day.When I buy things I look at the price. What I buy is dependent a lot on the price. Not because I'm skint, but I want to know what sort of cost things are. I won't pay £9 for a block of cheese when one a metre away that tastes almost the same is £4
So getting to the checkout and finding a bunch of prices have changed and my shopping has gone up £18 or whatever, will see quite a few baskets and trolleys left at the checkout unpaid, I reckon.
FiF said:
In my view supermarkets are trying to sell to and price for 3 broad types of customers, a) price sensitive customers, b) convenience driven customers and c) quality / status conscious customers.
Introduction of pricing system which, according to the article linked in the OP, can changes prices several times a day sometimes by significant percentages. This would make it very difficult, even with price comparison apps and social media for customers in category a) those where the lowest price is THE most important factor. They may be working to a very tight budget or simply be bargain hunters, but life for type a) will be more difficult.
IMO the supermarkets would therefore lose category a) customers. They would shift to lidl etc as lidl etc would expand their honest value pricing to meet demand. Introduction of pricing system which, according to the article linked in the OP, can changes prices several times a day sometimes by significant percentages. This would make it very difficult, even with price comparison apps and social media for customers in category a) those where the lowest price is THE most important factor. They may be working to a very tight budget or simply be bargain hunters, but life for type a) will be more difficult.
Perhaps that what the big supermarkets want, although i doubt it. More like some whizzkids in management are just dreaming this stuff up as being really great, because the technology makes it possible now.
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