Photo: XMI
The transformation of our shops continues.
DIGITAL PRICE TAGS ARRIVE
Digital price tags could soon become a common sight in Australian supermarkets, as retailers expand the use of Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) – a technology that allows stores to update prices instantly without replacing paper tags.
Major chains including Woolworths Group and Coles Group have already begun rolling out the digital displays across hundreds of stores, installing millions of small electronic screens.
The labels, which typically use e-ink technology similar to that found in e-readers, connect to a central computer system that can change prices across an entire store within seconds.
Photo: SKU
Traditionally, supermarket staff must manually replace paper price labels every week to reflect promotions and price changes. Electronic labels allow this to become automatic.
Some digital labels can also include additional features, such as small LED lights that help staff quickly locate items when fulfilling online grocery orders.
Retailers say the goal is to ‘modernise stores’ and ‘make pricing more accurate’.
However, the rollout has sparked debate among consumer advocates and researchers, who warn the technology could eventually enable “dynamic pricing” in physical stores.
This refers to a pricing model in which costs fluctuate frequently based on demand, time of day, or other factors, similar to how prices change on many online shopping platforms.
Critics fear that if supermarkets adopt dynamic pricing systems, items could become more expensive during busy periods or when demand increases.
The technology also technically allows prices to be updated multiple times a day, raising concerns that shoppers might find it harder to keep track of how much they are paying.
Researchers studying retail technology say electronic shelf labels themselves are not inherently problematic, but could change how pricing strategies are used in supermarkets.
Instant price updates across thousands of products opens the door for more ‘flexible’ – and potentially more complex – pricing models in the future.
Supermarket operators have pushed back against these concerns, emphasising that the current use of electronic shelf labels is focused on ‘operational efficiency’.
The move comes at a time when Australia’s major supermarket chains are under intense scrutiny over grocery prices and competition.
Government regulators and parliamentary inquiries have been examining pricing practices across the sector, as many households continue to struggle with the rising cost of living.
Consumer groups argue that the introduction of technology capable of rapid price changes should be accompanied by clear safeguards to ensure transparency for shoppers.
As supermarkets continue investing in digital infrastructure, many experts believe traditional paper price tags will gradually disappear from stores over the next decade.
A shift away, once again, from the paperback to the virtual.
That’s not all that is set to disappear, either.
As we have warned about for many years here on the website, this is just a small piece in a larger puzzle of ongoing, AI-driven cyber transformation for supermarkets.
THE FUTURE OF SUPERMARKETS
Over the next decade, our major chains will become unrecognisable compared to what they once were – as an era of AI, robotics, biometrics, and surveillance arrives in new ways.
Artificial intelligence will eventually phase outthe need for checkouts all together, as supermarkets switch to biometric identification measures.
Supermarkets to be ‘Checkout Free’ by 2030
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The eventual plan is to have people sign up for an account, scan their faces, and instead of paying for their items when leaving the store at a checkout – the customer simply walks out, the camera recognises who they are, and it charges their account automatically.
We have already seen this with the introduction of ‘smart trollies’ and ‘smart gates’ – slowly training the public to normalise this type of ‘convenient’ technology.
Woolworths expands ‘smart trolley’ trial to additional states
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Coles introduces new Smart Gates at self-checkouts
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Supermarkets have expanded the use of these new features to hundreds of locations across the country, using camera surveillance and AI scanners to monitor customer activity.
Woolworths surveillance creep continues across the country
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Employees themselves are also being phased out, with the introduction of automated robotic workforces and ‘hybrid’ self-checkouts wit conveyor belts.
Supermarkets Begin Switch to Automated Workforces
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Coles renews push for ‘hybrid’ self-serve checkouts
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Sophisticated surveillance relationships with controversial tech firms like Palantir are allowing this type of supermarket dystopia to become possible.
Inside the Surveillance Relationship Between Coles and Palantir
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Now, you can add easily manipulated and forever-changing digital price tags to the list of ‘exciting smart features’ that our shops of the new world will have in them.
Who else can’t wait to scan their faces and line up to get their GMO bananas?
I didn’t think as much.
If there has ever been a time to regain control over your own personal resource chain and/or support independent retailers, this is it.
Our supermarket chains are officially lost, never to return to the way they were.
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Depending on how they roll this out and how ‘dynamic’ the price fluctuations will be, I can see the chaos where the $3.50 loaf of bread on the shelf could become $4.00 at the checkout. Theoretically this could happen now as the big chains don’t put price stickers on individual items. All this tech has nothing to do with benefiting the customer – and in a lot of cases is a burden (self checkouts etc). We could see a return of smaller and friendlier grocery stores.