Home Depot Vows Its Digital Price Tags Won't Change Prices On You; Shoppers Stare At Them Anyway, Just In Case
The home improvement chain says its electronic shelf labels are for finding drills, not for sizing up customers. Aisle 14 remains under observation.
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."
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."
Continued on page A6, next to the hammer that is the same price for everyone
