The actual circumstances where surge pricing would be worth doing are pretty uncommon. Like, what news item would make a manager think “Oh, I should double the price of jeans for the next four hours” or “No one will care if the price of eggs is 50% higher between 7am and 11am”. Price changes longer than that, or less frequent than weekly are just price changes, and digital tags just make it happen faster, more reliably, and with less labor.
They track all purchases, and that means data they can feed into an algorithm to track typical hourly/weekly/monthly demand. If they know eggs are more in demand by X% between 7am and 11am then it certainly makes sense to charge Y% more during that time. It’s all just math.
Makes sense from a profit standpoint, you mean? Because it certainly doesn’t make sense from a standpoint of prudence, morality, ethics, community, or common sense.
Doesn’t matter. You still need some condition to trigger price changes. No grocery is going to change the price of bread based on the wheat futures market, because no consumer cares about wheat futures. Maybe they’d change based on their own inventory, but they can’t do that too quickly, or the price will change between the time customer picks up the product and the clerk rings it up.
There’s a whole population of people who shop in advance - visit web sites, check the store fliers, whatever - to get the best price. If a shelf price doesn’t match their researched price, they’re never going to that store again.
Aside from gas stations, grocery stores seem to have the most volatile pricing. They’re already making weekly changes on dozens of items, probably based on purchasing algorithms. Maybe that counts as retail “surge” pricing, but it’s not the dynamics that people fear when talking about digital price tags.
The actual circumstances where surge pricing would be worth doing are pretty uncommon. Like, what news item would make a manager think “Oh, I should double the price of jeans for the next four hours” or “No one will care if the price of eggs is 50% higher between 7am and 11am”. Price changes longer than that, or less frequent than weekly are just price changes, and digital tags just make it happen faster, more reliably, and with less labor.
They track all purchases, and that means data they can feed into an algorithm to track typical hourly/weekly/monthly demand. If they know eggs are more in demand by X% between 7am and 11am then it certainly makes sense to charge Y% more during that time. It’s all just math.
Makes sense from a profit standpoint, you mean? Because it certainly doesn’t make sense from a standpoint of prudence, morality, ethics, community, or common sense.
Welcome to 2026. It’s been this way for a while now.
Do you think that’s how surge pricing works on apps like Uber? There’s a human watching the market and constantly making adjustments?
Or do you think it’s computerized (or nowadays, probably AI)? Which do you think is more likely?
Doesn’t matter. You still need some condition to trigger price changes. No grocery is going to change the price of bread based on the wheat futures market, because no consumer cares about wheat futures. Maybe they’d change based on their own inventory, but they can’t do that too quickly, or the price will change between the time customer picks up the product and the clerk rings it up.
There’s a whole population of people who shop in advance - visit web sites, check the store fliers, whatever - to get the best price. If a shelf price doesn’t match their researched price, they’re never going to that store again.
Aside from gas stations, grocery stores seem to have the most volatile pricing. They’re already making weekly changes on dozens of items, probably based on purchasing algorithms. Maybe that counts as retail “surge” pricing, but it’s not the dynamics that people fear when talking about digital price tags.
Just because it’s not happening constantly everywhere, doesn’t mean that it isn’t being tested some places, and isn’t coming soon.
It also doesn’t mean that it is.
What reality do you live in, because I want to go to there
Germany.