• aramis87@fedia.io
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    8 months ago

    Price increases happen overnight, or with everything tracked and digitized, this could lead supermarkets to charge more money right when demand spikes or maybe in the future even target particular shoppers willing to pay more.

    They’re going to take your frequent shopper card and figure out what your price point for different goods are. Then they’re going to take their tracking of your cellphone and figure out when you’re approaching your favorite goods, to raise the price. The technology for everything part of this already exists and is being used, it’s just a question of who links everything up first.

    • protist@mander.xyz
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      8 months ago

      It seems like no one commenting here actually read this article, which is about a grocery store in Norway that’s been doing this for 10 years already, and uses it to try to undercut the competition by pennies

      • wahming@monyet.cc
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        8 months ago

        I live in Norway. We have one of the highest grocery prices worldwide, and the smallest selection of goods. Trips over the border for grocery shopping are a weekly ritual for those who live close enough. Small immigrant owned groceries manage to be cheaper than the giant chains with a thousand times the purchasing power. Please do not emulate Norwegian grocery stores. This article is marketing BS.

      • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I did read the article. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think they’re immediately going to screw us over with this the moment they think they can get away with it.

  • neptune@dmv.social
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    8 months ago

    The government has to get involved right? For something like food, you can’t set up a system that walks right up against price gouging.

    • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The government is owned by these corporations, so no.

      It’s up to the people to fight back organically and locally. We cannot rely on the system because it is set up for us to fail.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Why? Just don’t buy it. When do you have absolutely nothing to eat?

      Worst case scenario you can always buy directly from farmers.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        8 months ago

        Well usually I have nothing to eat when I haven’t bought any fucking food

        • iopq@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Where I live we have farmers’ markets, the supermarket is not the only option

          Not to mention you can just order food online directly from an online shopping site

          • Skua@kbin.earth
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            8 months ago

            We have farmers’ markets here too, but if the problem with a supermarket is prices being too high then a trip to the farmers’ market is the opposite of a solution. Never mind, of course, that a farmers’ market would get cleaned out of everything on sale in a matter of minutes if everyone replaced their supermarket shopping with it.

            I would like to know why you think that a supermarket that applies dynamic pricing in a physical shop would not also do the same online

            • iopq@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Most people would just take the price hike, and if the demand for farmers markets is higher more farmers would come out

              When there’s money to be made, there is surely people who want the opportunity

          • TheWeirdestCunt@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            I live in the countryside with fields directly backing onto my house and I still have no way of buying food directly from farmers, the absolute closest you can get is someone with an apple tree leaving apples in a box on their driveway when they have too many to use. Farmers markets are for posh twats.

            • iopq@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              In Hilo, Hawaii it’s just Filipinos selling fruits, the opposite of posh

      • lemmeout@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        ^ This comment has got to be trolling.

        You need electricity? Just buy your own generator.
        Need water? Just dig a well…
        Need oxygen? Well…

      • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Are you joking?

        Why should we lower our standards so people richer than us can be even richer? Not everyone is a useful idiot like you.

      • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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        8 months ago

        My local farmers market is only open seasonally and consists of about 1/3 of their booths selling banking services or squishmallows, 1/3 of the booths selling (delicious, but not very storable) ethnic foods, a bread stand, a honey stand that also sells mail order animals by the quarter (butchered, I think), and 3 booths selling scraggly renditions of whatever they’re currently harvesting.

        I wish I lived in the same sorts of community conditions where you live, or had the connections to local food producers that you do, but the reality is that I takes whats I can get.
        And what I can get is from mega corps that care more about profits than starving a few people.

  • Bob@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    So basically, they want to raise the prices when it’s convenient for them and the prices will also conveniently never go under what it is listed for today even if the demand is low

    I saw Wendy’s doing this last month. That’s fine honestly they can do whatever I don’t care, a fast food restaurant will always be a want rather than a need. Grocery is almost always a need, that’s not ok

    • thirteene@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Dynamic pricing is exploitive at it’s base, allowing it for any industry is a mistake. Setting precedent for food is extremely dangerous regardless of the source.

      • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yes. This should 100% be illegal.

        It’s clear the ruling class is desperate to squeeze us for even more profit.

        Let’s not be useful idiots and go along with it, eh?

    • fustigation769curtain@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The problem with stuff like that, especially in America where every day more people feel like they have nothing to lose, is that people will literally just take their guns and shoot up crowds/gougers.

      It’s a good way to fast-track the destruction of society.

    • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Every day I read a new headline than make me feel like stealing is the closest any of us laymen can get to justice against these types of people. I hope one day massive crowds just take a run on whichever stores start to do this.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Just return the shit that went down in prices and rebuy it. Just keep a healthy supply of bugs at the ready. Have an accomplice bug bomb the store if they start getting suspicious of your return frequency, that aught to throw em off.

      Could call it a dynamic infestation… the more the prices change the more the bug frequency changes.

  • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Fuck everything about this and everyone who does it, the world is awful enough to try and get by in we don’t need predatory bullshit like this to make already disgustingly wealthy corporations wealthier: Greed is a crime against humanity.

  • terwn43lp@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    next they’ll add microtransactions and a season pass (costco already does i guess)

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Right when the inflation thing started I invested heavily in Costco. Figure if suddenly the price of food mattered a lot people will make sure to buy it only from them.

        Works out for me, my nearest Costco is closer than my nearest Walmart

  • KaiReeve@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Prices change while you’re shopping? I foresee a lot of restocking happening if that’s the case.

    If my milk increases 50¢ in the time it takes me to walk it up to the register, I’m just gonna leave that f*cker in the bagging area and walk out.

    • FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      In the article, the owner using it says he only decreases price while you shop, since having increases during shopping would push customers away, and he’s absolutely right it would. So price increases would only happen overnight/closed hours. The owner talks about competing his low prices with competitors so it can be a race to the bottom. But I doubt most companies would use the pricing this way, most likely there will be surge pricing during weekends and after work.

  • PhAzE@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    The problem with this is, they buy bananas at $x, then the price goes to $x+5, so they raise theor prices +$6 to compensate, however the stock they bought was still only bought at $x.

    People end up paying a lot more when prices jump, when the store paid a lower price a day ago for that exact food. The price drops are also implemented with way less vigor so they drop slow but you can bet they spike instantly as the cost price goes up.

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      What happens when I return the expensive food and buy the cheaper food? Like when a TV goes on sale and I return the one I bought last week?

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        You make a little bit of money? I can see this system being gamed so hard by people with time on their hands. Stores won’t care how hard they get gamed, if there are enough lazy people where they still make more profit.

  • BrieIsCheese@midwest.social
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    8 months ago

    I thought we already had this and called it “inflation” and “Macroeconomic headwinds” due to WSB and the war in Ukraine and the stimmy checks.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Doubt it will happen around here until they replace all the price signs with digital ones. As it is right now, every time a price changes, an employee has to manually change that.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s a possibility for sure, but Amazon also is a technology company, so they have a big advantage on that end.

        Kroger has not seemed to embraced technology to that extent yet. I’m guessing not Aldi either, but I don’t shop there.

        Walmart would be the next logical company to do it.

        • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Kroger has barely embraced self-checkout lanes. The one near me only just recently decided to put a couple in.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            They’ve had them for quite some time here and have been expanding them, but I wouldn’t exactly call that cutting-edge technology.

  • Riskable@programming.dev
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    8 months ago

    How long before some supermarket introduces, “surge pricing” for post-sunday-mass shoppers and gets sued based on religious discrimination?

    Or some store just up and decides that they want to charge black people more? They’ll say it’s based on credit score or similar nonsense.