{"id":4605,"date":"2026-09-15T16:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=4605"},"modified":"2026-09-15T16:53:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:53:00","slug":"new-jersey-just-froze-new-digital-shelf-labels-for-a-year-over-fears-they-raise-grocery-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=4605","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey just froze new digital shelf labels for a year over fears they raise grocery prices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2281281531-e1789482863235.jpg?w=2048\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At a Walmart Supercenter in North Bergen, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Victor Lopez, 21, tapped the screen of his work-issued smartphone. Under a field labeled \u201cEnter new price,\u201d he punched in $10 for a bottle of barbeque sauce.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If it had worked, Lopez, a team leader, would have almost tripled the price of the item with a click of a button. But it didn\u2019t, and that\u2019s not due to some human or technical error. It was the whole point of the demonstration: to show that store associates are not able to use electronic shelf labels (ESLs) to raise prices arbitrarily.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe cannot take prices up in the store,\u201d Kyle Boyd, store manager of the supercenter, where about 90% of tags have been replaced with ESLs, told Retail Brew during a tour of the facility last month. \u201cWe can only take prices down in the store.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The willingness to promote some pricing practices\u2014as well as touting what it is characterizing as a technical stopgap in place to prevent price hikes at the store level\u2014comes as Walmart faces political pushback that could determine the future of electronic shelf labels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With lawmakers increasingly tying the technology to controversial pricing practices, the retail giant is making the case that ESLs won\u2019t fundamentally change how prices are set.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Using or abusing:\u00a0<\/strong>In July, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the Fair Price Protection Act into law to protect consumers from \u201cdiscriminatory surveillance pricing\u201d\u2014which it defines as using personal data to set prices t \u2014and placing a one-year moratorium on new ESLs while the state studies the effects of the tech.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Critics of the legislation argue that digital price tags are simply a tool for saving time and cutting costs, while supporters of the law argue they make it easier for retailers to manipulate and raise prices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This debate is now playing out on a national level. Maryland\u00a0passed a similar law\u00a0earlier this year, and legislation is pending in several other states. A recent report\u00a0from the Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union also claimed that Instacart\u2019s AI pricing tool offers individualized prices on the same items.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In response, companies and industry groups are eager to distance ESLs from unpopular pricing practices like surveillance pricing, dynamic pricing, and other labels such as surge pricing, which conjure images of skyrocketing airline or concert tickets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cElectronic shelf labels are not tools for surge pricing, but rather tools for efficiency and affordability,\u201d Macy Lemon, vice president of state government affairs at the National Grocers Association, said in a statement urging Governor Sherrill to make changes to the New Jersey law before it was signed due to concerns it would make it harder for stores to offer affordable groceries to consumers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the opposite end of the spectrum, Ademola Oyefeso, international vice president of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) International Union, told Retail Brew it\u2019s not a matter of if, but when, companies start using the technology to engage in dynamic pricing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA retailer may not be doing it right now, but they are laying the groundwork for it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the union wants a full ban on ESLs, which it sees as a \u201ctool for price-gouging and job loss,\u201d Oyefeso said. He pointed to the recent example of Norway, where a number of grocery chains\u00a0engaged in rapid repricing\u00a0on a daily basis after installing digital tags.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For an industry that seemed ready for widespread adoption, the legislative pushback could have serious implications for the future of the technology. Walmart committed to\u00a0rolling out ESLs\u00a0across its entire US footprint of 2,300 locations by the end of the year. Kroger\u00a0added the tech\u00a0to a number of stores across the country, and Whole Foods is\u00a0testing out digital tags\u00a0at nearly 50 stores.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The struggle for retailers now is convincing consumers and lawmakers that digital labels won\u2019t open the door to problematic pricing practices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Will they or won\u2019t they?\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cDSLs operate on a closed system and do not interact with shoppers or collect any information about them,\u201d Robyn Babbitt, director of corporate communications at Walmart, said in an email to Retail Brew. \u201cThere is nothing like a camera or microphone in them; they just display prices\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The legislation is an \u201coverreaction,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When there is an increase to the base price of a product, as opposed to a rollback or promotion, it\u2019s happening at the corporate level and usually outside of regular shopping hours\u2014not spontaneously while customers are walking around the store, Babbitt said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey\u2019re centrally controlled through our pricing team,\u201d she said during the tour of the supercenter in North Bergen, adding that human beings remain in control of all pricing actions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While working closely with retailers on their merchandising and promotional strategies, Asa Farquhar, strategic principal of price and promotion at RELEX, a retail planning platform, said he is not see this technology being used for dynamic pricing among his retail clients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, he sees them being used to reduce errors and optimize price adjustments that were happening anyway. \u201cI have never seen them talking about how we can use these tools to get a leg up on customers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Theoretically, however, the technology could make it easier for retailers to price more dynamically, Farquhar explained, and for that to result in \u201cany number of negative pricing scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Farquhar, though, this is not a guarantee of bad practices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIf a price can be changed faster, easier, and with less expense, I think it\u2019s fair to say that could lead to retailers being willing to change prices more often,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think it\u2019s a stretch to say just because a price could change more often or is executed more operationally efficiently that we would see any kind of nefarious strategies around that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This report was originally published by <\/em>Retail Brew.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Jersey #froze #digital #shelf #labels #year #fears #raise #grocery #prices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At a Walmart Supercenter in No&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3262,2674,1909,4084,1119,334,7629,7627,597,2004,7628,2057,952,85],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-consumer-prices","tag-digital","tag-fears","tag-froze","tag-grocery","tag-jersey","tag-labels","tag-morning-brew","tag-prices","tag-raise","tag-shelf","tag-shopping","tag-walmart","tag-year"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - 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