I work in a another nationwide chain that is rolling these out. They are wirelessly connected to a database so prices can be set automatically and update within minutes. I don’t think they want to do individual pricing though and if they did they’d just do it at the register. While electronic tags would make store by store pricing easier, that has already been happening to some extent and it’s becoming less common as the industry consolidates.
What these are really for is to cut costs. The store I work at probably used to spend 15+ labor hours a week hanging tags on top of a full time employee just to audit them. The other store I used to work at had two full time employees doing it. There’s a special printer, app, tons of different little plastic hangers, and paper to print and hang paper tags. These new electronic tags are shipped in a box as they’re needed, are reusable, and are automatically updated.
That was my immediate thought as well, customer based pricing is best when hidden. People noticing a bunch of e-ink price tags refreshing with higher prices when they walk up is a recipe for disaster.
Real time updating is not fun though. That means they’re more likely to do “surge pricing” when say, people get off work at 5.
I work in a another nationwide chain that is rolling these out. They are wirelessly connected to a database so prices can be set automatically and update within minutes. I don’t think they want to do individual pricing though and if they did they’d just do it at the register. While electronic tags would make store by store pricing easier, that has already been happening to some extent and it’s becoming less common as the industry consolidates.
What these are really for is to cut costs. The store I work at probably used to spend 15+ labor hours a week hanging tags on top of a full time employee just to audit them. The other store I used to work at had two full time employees doing it. There’s a special printer, app, tons of different little plastic hangers, and paper to print and hang paper tags. These new electronic tags are shipped in a box as they’re needed, are reusable, and are automatically updated.
That was my immediate thought as well, customer based pricing is best when hidden. People noticing a bunch of e-ink price tags refreshing with higher prices when they walk up is a recipe for disaster.
Real time updating is not fun though. That means they’re more likely to do “surge pricing” when say, people get off work at 5.