Perusing the grocery aisle within the Westside Market on twenty third Road in Manhattan, you may not even discover the screens. They give the impression of being identical to paper worth labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we’ve come to affiliate with a sure service provider folksiness. They’re not significantly brilliant or showy. The one clues that they’re not odd sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable mild bulb and, on some, a small QR code.
These are digital shelf labels, chip-enabled screens that some shops are actually utilizing to show product costs. Not like their paper predecessors, the costs aren’t printed in ink however rendered in pixels, and so they can change instantaneously, at any time. The labels additionally include further options. An LED mild can change on to flag one thing, maybe a product that wants restocking, explains Vusion, the corporate that made the labels Westside Market is now utilizing. The QR codes are designed to assist prospects discover extra details about a product, or combine with a personalised buying checklist somebody might need.
In fact, these labels aren’t simply labels, however end-points of a a lot bigger effort to digitize each manner we now interface with merchandise. “You have got a community within the retailer. You ship the data that you just need to transmit to the labels, and there you go,” says Finn Wikander, the chief product officer at Pricer, one other firm that’s manufacturing ESLs with the hope of constructing them a fixture of twenty first century buying.
Unsurprisingly, digital shelf labels have change into a flashpoint for shopper anxiousness. The businesses promoting the units, and the shops shopping for them, say the know-how isn’t about screwing folks over however about making their companies simpler to run. Automating worth modifications eliminates hours spent changing labels. It additionally makes it less complicated to answer new tariffs or account for rising inflation.
However in a world spooked by dynamic pricing, digital shelf labels can look to some like a goblin of digitization—a symptom of late-stage Silicon Valley campaigns to streamline and optimize seemingly all parts of commerce. Even members of Congress have raised suspicions in regards to the know-how, arguing that it allows worth gouging and discrimination, significantly because it turns into extra widespread in the USA.
“Traditionally, after we thought of brick and mortar shops, costs have been comparatively secure,” Vicki Morwitz, a Columbia Enterprise Faculty professor who focuses on marketing and shopper habits, tells Quick Firm. “These digital shelf tags break that assumption which makes pricing really feel much less secure. Even when common costs aren’t essentially going up, that shelf instability can change into a psychological flash level.”
Screenified all the pieces
A handful of firms promote this know-how as a part of broader enterprise software program packages. There’s Pricer, a Swedish agency, and Vusion, headquartered in France. Solum operates out of South Korea, and Opticon, identified for barcode scanners, can also be within the combine. Digital shelf labels will also be purchased, ahem, off the shelf and built-in right into a retailer’s Bluetooth community—no enterprise startup required.
The pitch for these units is precisely what unsettles so many consumers: Digital shelf labels make it a lot simpler for shops to alter costs dynamically and extra regularly. The businesses that manufacture and deploy these instruments say there are authentic causes to take action. For instance, a retailer may increase costs if suppliers enhance prices, or reduce them rapidly when a product is nearing its expiration date.
ESLs additionally enable chains to maintain costs constant throughout areas and reply extra rapidly to rivals (particularly helpful at a time when customers are already carrying smartphones to check costs between shops). “Most customers at present are used to both doing their very own scanning or use ChatGPT or Gemini to search out the most effective provide or use worth comparability websites,” says Pricer’s Wikander.
Then there’s labor. Staff may spend hours changing labels for a worth surge or sale. ”The thought is to liberate folks from very tedious duties in a retailer. Altering costs may very well be one. Launching promotions may very well be one,” argues Loïc Oumier, a advertising govt with Vusion. There are additionally regulatory issues: France, for example, handed a regulation mandating that costs at checkout match marketed costs on aisles, which pushed shops in that nation to undertake the know-how, says Wikander.
They’re now rolling out extra broadly in the USA, particularly at massive chains. Vusion says its labels are in use at Recent Market, Mattress Agency, and Leon’s in Canada. Walmart, which declined to remark for this story, announced in 2024 that it might start putting in digital shelf labels, with plans to convey Vusion’s know-how to greater than 2,000 shops by the tip of 2026. Checks or deployments have appeared in Complete Meals, Schnucks, and even smaller retailers like Westside Market.
The reception might be frosty. Whereas there are some situations, like from Uber rides and airline tickets, the place customers have come to just accept quickly altering prices, the apply usually feels jarring. That stress was evident in 2024, when Wendy’s faced backlash after saying plans to put in digital menu boards and later promised it wouldn’t introduce surge pricing for burgers. Customers additionally fear about worth gouging, the place retailers spike costs throughout emergencies. “Exploiting customers after they haven’t any actual alternate options or restricted alternate options,” says Columbia’s Morwitz. “The issue is customers could really feel exploited lengthy earlier than an economist would say they’re.”
There’s additionally the comprehensible anxiousness that the know-how is designed to chop jobs. Some staff, as reported in The Nation, say the labels don’t simplify their work however exchange one form of labor with one other type of algorithmic babysitting. Not like paper tags, screens can break, and pc applications fall sufferer to bugs and web outages. Staff at one chain retailer operated by Kroger, which has additionally deployed the tech, have apparently complained that the labels “warmth” up shops. (Kroger didn’t reply to Quick Firm‘s request for remark.)
Issues attain D.C.
Lawmakers have taken discover. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania wrote to Kroger after the corporate introduced it might introduce the know-how, amid accusations that it was utilizing facial recognition to point out totally different prospects totally different costs. In a letter of response obtained by Quick Firm, Kroger defended the rollout, saying ESLs helped it handle the 1.3 billion worth modifications it implements annually and freed up associates to help prospects. Paula Walsh, Kroger’s director of retail operations, denied within the letter that the corporate was utilizing facial recognition or gathering private data from prospects via the tags.
“Kroger dodged my questions however confirmed my key issues: It’s utilizing digital shelf labels to alter grocery costs in real-time and accumulate information that may very well be used to jack up grocery costs for People,” Warren tells Quick Firm. ”I’ll maintain pushing to ensure customers aren’t being exploited whereas they work laborious to place meals on the desk.”
Wikander, for his half, dismisses the concept retailers would use the know-how that manner. “Simply because you’ve got the opportunity of screwing your prospects doesn’t imply that retailers will do this,” he says. “I don’t suppose retailers would sometimes do it, as a result of the customers are smarter than that.” Wikander says it takes a typical enterprise round a 12 months or two and that, whereas the funding upfront is huge, the labels final for a few years.
Certainly, for all of the eeriness surrounding the labels, analysis exhibits that it may not be a lot of a change, worth smart, for both customers or companies. Ioannis Stamatopoulos, a enterprise professor on the College of Texas at Austin, says there may be little proof that digital shelf labels result in important worth swings. He pointed to a 2025 study involving an American grocery retailer that discovered no proof of the apply, and one other involving a global grocery retailer that confirmed that costs tended to say no, significantly for gadgets with quick shelf lives.
A lot of his analysis, at the very least, means that the labels are best at stopping meals waste, because it makes it simpler for shops to supply gross sales on merchandise like bananas and strawberries after they’re about to go dangerous.
For now, the way forward for grocery buying could look nearly precisely just like the previous—besides the worth tag is oh-so-faintly glowing.
