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Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

theguardian.com

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Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#11

Post by fred_is_fred »

craftkiller wrote: post #6
dfxm12 wrote: post #3

Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program

Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price…

"The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs"."

This already happens. We've been getting personalized coupons from our local store for 15+ years now.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#13

Post by dfxm12 »

craftkiller wrote: post #6
dfxm12 wrote: post #3

Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program

Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price…

FYI, I specifically mentioned Aldi because they don't have loyalty cards. I understand that might not have been clear to everyone, so I'll edit my comment to make it clear.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#14

Post by bediger4000 »

One thing about "surveillance pricing" I've not seen addressed is that it destroys the usual model of demand curve. A given buyer may be judged to have the resources to pay a particular (high) price for a good, but other factors may be relevant: that buyer might need to save on good A in order to buy more of good B. The "surveillance pricer" would demand a higher price for good A because it has no information about need for good B by the buyer.

That's a simplistic example, but we've been lectured about consumer choices, invisible hands of marketplaces, demand curves and marginal value for so long I'm genuinely shocked that ill-defined "predatory pricing" is the issue we see in the news.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#15

Post by nzach »

> While the law bans setting higher prices through surveillance pricing, it doesn’t address reducing prices. If a company raises its prices for everyone, and then offers individualized discounts, “suddenly you’ve arrived at the same outcome,” McBrien says.

While I agree with the intent of this law, I don't think it will be effective. If you have a system capable of jacking prices up you can just multiply this calculated delta by -1 transform that into a discount.

To effectively prevent this practice you probably need to ban any kind of personal discount. I don't think we will ever see such law, nor do I think this would be a good idea.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#16

Post by fluxquanta »

craftkiller wrote: post #6
dfxm12 wrote: post #3

Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program

Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price…

>Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price.

This is already happening at Lidl. I was standing in line one day and the lady in front of me asked if I had the app, because there was something like a $5 off $50 purchase coupon in there I could use. I did have the app and checked, but my coupon instead was for $15 off $150.

Thinking a little more deeply about it, every time I go there I tend to spend an average of around $125. My hypothesis is that they have that data and know a customer's average spend, so they tailor the coupon's dollar amounts to the customer to entice them to spend slightly more than they usually do.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#18

Post by craftkiller »

dfxm12 wrote: post #13
craftkiller wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. The easy way to implement this in-person would be to give customer-specific coupons. You could get an email that says "use your loyalty card at checkout and get $2 off eggs". Then you just give everyone a different discount and only the privacy-minded folks end up paying the (inflated) sticker price. A significantly more complex hypothetical that I don't think anyone is doing yet: With digital price…

FYI, I specifically mentioned Aldi because they don't have loyalty cards. I understand that might not have been clear to everyone, so I'll edit my comment to make it clear.

Ah, yeah I don't have an Aldi near me so I didn't know that. Regardless, the same approach could be applied via emailing coupons with barcodes to scan at the register. It'd just be less convenient for the customer than having it automatically applied via a loyalty card.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#19

Post by wood_spirit »

dfxm12 wrote: post #3

Just going to Aldi and shopping for yourself insulates you from this nonsense, no? ETA: Aldi here is representing any store without a loyalty program

My mainstream supermarket in Nordics has for the longest time given individual coupons in their loyalty program.

There are three tiers of discount. There are general special offers, advertised widely, to get people through the door. Then there are members only discounts, advertised in store, to get people to be members. Then there are mailed to members personal discounts that are uncannily accurate for what is running out to get you to go shopping now instead of later. These days the hand scanners and apps also tell you what coupons you have so you don’t need mail but junk mail is still regular.

TBH as a shopper it works great.

Re: Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores

#20

Post by gruez »

nzach wrote: post #15

> While the law bans setting higher prices through surveillance pricing, it doesn’t address reducing prices. If a company raises its prices for everyone, and then offers individualized discounts, “suddenly you’ve arrived at the same outcome,” McBrien says. While I agree with the intent of this law, I don't think it will be effective. If you have a system capable of jacking prices up you can just multiply this calcula…

Yeah, sounds like a law that's passed because it sounds/polls good (ie. "affordability"), even though it's addressing a non-existent problem and is trivial to work around.
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