said The Food Professor, Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics
By Murray Sherriffs
Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, says that electronic shelf prices make it easier to change prices.
Some observers say that shelf labels make it easy to use personal data to determine how much individual customers pay, based on one’s profile, “…depending on where you live. how much you make and how many cars you own.”
It’s called surveillance pricing, different from dynamic pricing, where prices fluctuate based on demand and availability.
Loblaw, Sobeys and Metro have told CityNews that they aren’t planning to use surveillance pricing.
Charlebois says that the grocery industry works on very tight margins “…so any way to increase margins would be welcome, but sometimes ethical lines are crossed, as they were with bread a few years ago.”
He says that artificial intelligence is also at play and that surveillance pricing is something consumers and governments should be on the watch for.