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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Individual Price Tags Disappearing

In the state of Massachussets, individual price tags may no longer be required on store items, if a new bill is passed.  Replaced by individual digital scanners.  The implication is that the scanners, whatever their ultimate form, can then be used for other kinds of interaction with the shopper, besides just checking prices.  The devices have been stationary or mobile hand held in various implementations.  This was a concept we tested for years in store laboratories and in real stores.   At the right, an example of a test device at Stop n Shop we helped design and test.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The consumer groups seem to be a bit alarmist. My question is do shoppers actually use the price tag on the product or do they use the tag on the shelf? Even more many places the shelf tag has the price per unit which allows the shopper to actually do comparison shopping amongst brands, the tag on the bag just gives you the price for the item. As for scan price at the check-out I read the customer facing screen and look for certain items that I know were on sale. Truth be told I assume that for the most part the prices are correct. Does individual pricing really provide any use to customers or is it just a cost that we have saddled retailers with that now serves no purpose but to push our grocery bills up needlessly? Maybe the time has come to start reducing costs to companies in an effort to help company profitability and maybe spur economic and job growth and maybe just maybe for once lower consumer prices.