Shelf Label Changes Price Before Shopper Finishes Reading It

COLUMBUS, Ohio—At 2:41 p.m. Saturday, Darlene Fisk, 61, a fictional retired school librarian, stopped in front of a jar of creamy peanut butter (Aisle 7, middle shelf, between the honey and the regret) and began reading its electronic shelf label. She got as far as the dollar sign. By the time she reached the cents, the price had gone up 30 of them.

"It said three forty-nine," Fisk said. "Then it said three seventy-nine. I was still on the three."

It said three forty-nine. Then it said three seventy-nine. I was still on the three.

The label, a gray rectangle about the size of a playing card, updated itself in what store records describe as "a routine wireless refresh." A fictional store log labeled ESL-7 shows that the tag changed nine times between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., a pace a fictional regional pricing coordinator, Trent Mabry, called "well within the normal range for a Saturday with weather."

"The shopper was reading at a below-average speed," Mabry said. "Our system is optimized for a reader who finishes a price in under two seconds. We are exploring large-print tags that update more slowly for people who read every digit."

The incident comes as the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents more than 1.2 million people, has called on newly elected Democrats to ban electronic shelf labels and so-called surveillance pricing in grocery stores, according to Business Insider. Walmart and Kroger have been replacing printed tags with digital ones that can be updated remotely. New Jersey has put a one-year moratorium on the labels, and Maryland requires retailers to hold prices for at least one business day. Walmart and Target have said they do not use personal information to charge shoppers more.

4

Seconds the shopper spent reading the tag

2

Prices displayed during those seconds

30

Cents added between the dollars and the cents

Source: Source: Aisle 7 Price Integrity Log, kept in pencil. Fictional. Form ESL-30 filed in triplicate, all three now cost more.

None of that was visible from Aisle 7. What was visible was the tag, which Fisk began to read again, out loud and faster. "Three," she said. The label blinked. "Seventy-nine." It held. She photographed it, placed the jar in her cart and pushed briskly toward the registers, where the scanner charged her $3.84.

"There was a five-cent update in transit," a fictional front-end supervisor said, reading from a laminated card. "It caught up with her at checkout. That happens."

Marjorie Pell opened a new notebook for this. After 32 years and 40 pages, The Ledger's first volume is full; the second, a green spiral bought for $1.29 at a drugstore (school supplies, aisle 4, the week after back-to-school, which is to say August), began Saturday at 7:12 a.m. Page 1, line 1 reads: "Peanut butter. Two prices. One reading." She wrote it in pen. Pen does not refresh.

A fictional consumer psychologist at the Center for Shelf-Level Anxiety, Dr. Ruth Okonjo, said shoppers have adapted. "We are seeing speed-reading in the condiment aisle," Okonjo said. "We are seeing families assign one person to watch the tag while another reaches for the jar. One man in Dayton told us he now reads prices from right to left, so the cents cannot get away."

Retailers say the digital labels simplify a labor-intensive job and improve accuracy. Fisk agreed that the label was accurate. "It was accurate twice," she said.

Store management offered her a coupon for 25 cents off her next jar. The coupon was printed on paper. It has not changed since.

Marjorie Pell has worked or covered American stores for 40 years and still knows where the paper towels are. More from Marjorie Pell ›

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Terms in this story: Electronic Shelf Label (ESL)