Home Depot Vows Its Digital Price Tags Won't Change Prices On You; Shoppers Stare At Them Anyway, Just In Case

ATLANTA—Home Depot, the retailer that has spent decades selling Americans the tools to fix things they were told not to touch, assured shoppers this weekend that its new digital price tags will not quietly charge them more for being the kind of person who clearly needs a drill today.

The company's chief information officer told Business Insider that the electronic shelf labels, small wireless screens that are replacing paper tags, will not be used for dynamic pricing. Instead, the tags help workers find and pick items for delivery orders faster. You and your neighbor, the company said, should pay the same price for the same screwdriver on the same day.

Shoppers received the news with the calm, measured trust the American consumer now reserves for everything with a battery in it. "I believe them," said Rhonda Bisset, 52, of Marietta, Ga., who was standing very still in front of a box of deck screws. "I just want to see it with my own eyes. If I move suddenly, it might think I'm desperate."

The reassurance arrives as shoppers across the country have developed a growing suspicion that retailers are using artificial intelligence to set prices based on who is buying. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that companies including Walmart and McDonald's have dismissed concerns that they raise prices based on the customer or a sudden need. Shoppers have dismissed the dismissals, comparing prices on two phones in the same kitchen like jewelers inspecting a diamond.

"Nobody thinks the tag is evil. They think the tag is watching. Those are different problems, and only one of them is in my budget."

What Shoppers Suspect Is Changing The Price On A Digital Shelf Tag

Whether I look like I'm in a hurry	31%
My phone's battery percentage	22%
I said "hmm" out loud	17%
The truck I parked	14%
Headquarters, changing the price on purpose	11%
A ghost	5%

Source: The Daily SKU Aisle 14 Desk; 612 shoppers interviewed while squinting at a 2-inch screen

Retail analysts said the trust gap was predictable. "For 150 years a price tag was a piece of paper, and a piece of paper has never once read the room," said Lyle Tankersley, a pricing strategist at the consultancy Endcap Partners. "Now the tag glows. Anything that glows, people assume is thinking about them. That is just biology."

Mr. Tankersley said his firm had advised several retailers to make their digital tags appear less intelligent, including adding a slight flicker, a typo in the unit price and, in one pilot, a tiny sticker reading "I am just a tag." Early tests were promising. Shoppers in the pilot stores reported feeling "seen, but not judged, like at a dentist."

Inside the stores, the behavior has already changed. A Daily SKU survey of 612 home improvement shoppers found that 31 percent believe a digital tag can tell when they are in a hurry, 22 percent believe it can see their phone's battery and 14 percent believe it has looked at the truck they parked. Eleven percent named the correct answer, which is that a price changes when headquarters changes it, and several of those people asked to be removed from the results because they did not like how that sounded either.

Store associates said they were adjusting. "People ask me if the price will go down if they walk away and come back," said one associate in the paint department, who asked not to be named because he had been asked that four times before lunch. "I tell them it is the same price. Then they walk away and come back anyway. It is the most exercise anyone has gotten in this store since the garden center flooded."

Pricing experts noted that the one price in American retail that reliably changes based on who you are remains the one at the hardware store's checkout when your father is with you and asks if they have anything cheaper in the back.

At press time, a shopper in Aisle 14 had held a staring contest with a digital tag for 40 minutes. The price did not move. The shopper said that was exactly what it would want him to think.