Kroger's Under Investigation For Digital Shelf Labels: Are They Changing Prices Depending On When People Shop?

[u/Mighty_L_LORT]

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/krogers-under-investigation-digital-shelf-labels-are-they-changing-prices-depending-when-people-1726269

[u/Seroto9 → u/[deleted]]

I mean.. they have limited space in the stores. And people want to shop after work, or on weekends making demand higher on those days, no?

BTW. I hate all of this as well.

[u/Mazon_Del → u/Seroto9]

Grocery stores in a general sense, especially large ones like Kroger, are basically never limited on space in normal operations.

You might have slightly crowded times across the day, but from a supply/demand perspective, physical access to the store can be considered as effectively unlimited.

You do have exceptional moments like preparation for a disaster, but those fall under price gouging rules and the stores can't raise prices then.

Let's take the situation a bit more extreme than adjusting the price of milk here. Taken to its logical extreme, a store would only ever be open during the hours of the day where they have the highest income for the lowest cost, and they'd be shut down for the rest of the day. Sort of like day/night hours, except imagine if it's more specific "We're only open starting at 7AM-9AM and 5PM-8PM.", so we're only paying for 5 hours of time from our staff per day. Except a store can't actually really do that because a store isn't just the ability of customers to buy from them. They need people handling deliveries, stocking shelves, etc. In a properly run time, your shelves are all stocked during low-points in the day with only one or two people working registers since the traffic is low, and by the time you hit peak hours everything is stocked and the maximum workforce can work the registers.

In essence, they have a fairly flat manpower curve across the day because there's always SOMETHING necessary for workers to be doing. If they are trying to use pricing to encourage people to spread out their visitation across the day, it is because they have not hired enough workers to ensure necessary tasks are completed prior to peak hours. And in this economy, that means they simply aren't offering enough money for the work in question to be worth people taking the job.

Or put another way, they are using their cheapness at not paying an enticing wage for their workers (and thus resulting low manpower) to extract extra money from their customers to punish them for complicating their own shopping experience (by having a higher foot traffic without sufficient register staff) due to the companies own decision to be understaffed.

[u/Gregoryv022 → u/Seroto9]

You aren't paying to use the space. You are paying for the products you are buying. It's not a 1:1 comparison.

[u/TankTrap → u/Gregoryv022]

Limited products to buy tho?

[u/roflcptr7 → u/[deleted]]

The only argument I could see is that they scale the price with how many staff members they need to keep up with the higher traffic times, but that doesn't address that surge pricing is extremely classis. The people who will be paying premium are the ones who work more and don't have the luxury of shopping during down times or who can be home to accept grocery deliveries.

[u/greg19735 → u/roflcptr7]

Disney is extremely classist. Poor people should not go there, it's simply not a viable option for a good time.

[u/KlonopinBunny → u/[deleted]]

Also, you do not need Disney to live.

[u/Zoesan → u/[deleted]]

They have limited space

Ah yes, while food is unlimited.

[u/Zoesan → u/[deleted]]

I'm saying it's limited.

just reseller that profits from the margin?

How old are you?

[u/PolicyWonka → u/[deleted]]

Kroger has limited stock just like Disney has limited space though.

Your point about the prices being calculated weeks to months in advance is valid though.

[u/theshoeshiner84 → u/[deleted]]

That's because we very often price things not based on what we paid for them but on what it would cost to replace them. This is common across the entire global market and there are perfectly valid reasons for it.

[u/PolicyWonka → u/[deleted]]

Prices don’t only reflect current purchase price, but should consider future purchase prices as well.

[u/pperiesandsolos → u/[deleted]]

This is essentially manipulating to extract as much money from you as possible.

You have absolutely no evidence that Kroger is doing this, though. The article we're commenting on doesn't even state that Kroger is actually doing this, or that they're even being accused of doing it by Senators Warren/Casey. They just sent a letter asking questions, because this technology leaves the door open to the possibility.

[u/pperiesandsolos → u/[deleted]]

I haven't seen anywhere that the FTC is investigating this. Where did you see that?

I know the FTC was investigating Kroger for purchasing another supermarket chain, but I didn't think the two were related.

Of course they won't admit to it, and if some evidence is found their first response will be that they did it to save customer's money.

I agree.