I don’t know if you’ve noticed them yet, but I certainly have. When I’m walking through Albertson’s, Safeway or even Walmart, instead of seeing the old-style price information for products, I’m starting to see little, tiny LCD screens that have the price information for the same products. But here’s the trick; those LCD screens are talking to a computer in the store so that when the retailer wants to, they can change the price instantly. 

Getty Images

This allows the store to implement surge pricing if they so please. If they have a strong demand for a product, they can raise the price instantly, and cash in on that demand. 

That kind of agility and the computer power to make it happen now allows grocery vendors on the Internet to implement what is being called “surveillance pricing”. 

What is surveillance pricing? 

According to Google Copilot,
‘Surveillance pricing, also called personalized or algorithmic pricing, involves using a consumer’s personal information—such as location, browsing history, shopping habits, device type, income, and inferred willingness to pay—to determine the price they are offered for a product or service 

Getty Images

Many states are trying to ban this process, but none have succeeded. Now It looks like the city of Seattle might be the first Municipality. To institute a ban on surveillance pricing. 

Charging different amounts for a product to different people is nothing new, and it’s not illegal. If you’ve experienced surge pricing when renting a hotel room or buying plane tickets, you know what we’re talking about. But using the same system on the Internet to adjust prices for basic need items is not popular with the general public. 

Think of it this way. How do you feel about your neighbor down the street paying less for toilet paper than you do? 

Grocery representatives claim that this will actually cause higher prices if Seattle bans surveillance pricing.  

Getty Images

A spokesperson for Safeway is quoted as saying that the law would cause Safeway stores in Seattle to cancel their loyalty program. 

If I understand this rationale correctly, what this spokesperson is saying is if you don’t, let us charge some people more, then we’ll have to charge everybody more.