Walmart plans to replace traditional price stickers with electric shelf labels. Once installed, the price tags will allow the store to change the price on items as frequently as every 10 seconds. That means a store could make the call to drop the price of a product that’s expected to expire soon or raise the cost of a high-demand item with the click of a button.Walmart has been testing the technology at its store in Grapevine, Texas, and plans to roll out digital shelf labels (DSLs) to 2,300 stores by the end of 2026. The change represents a significant shift in how store associates manage pricing, inventory, order fulfillment, and customer interactions, Walmart says.The digital tags reduce the amount of time associates need to spend walking the floor to change paper tags by hand. In the test store, they’ve increased productivity and simplified stock replenishment, ultimately allowing for things to happen faster but also with less staff.NPR notes that Walmart isn’t the only store utilizing digital tags. Digital shelf labels are already being used at Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh stores, and the Midwestern chain Schnucks, amongst others, and are a bit more commonplace in Europe.
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Over time, the tags could also be used for more than just telling you the price. For instance, you might be able to scan the tag to get more information about a product, be it where it was sourced or information about whether or not it’s gluten-free.While the tags could ultimately be used for things like surge pricing, where a store, for instance, charges more for ice cream on a hot summer day, stores are more likely to use them to ensure things like making sure their online and in-store prices are the same.
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