Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Krogers brings NYC style pricing to rest of America" video.

Yep, I worked for a Kroger subsidiary and the amount of time and energy I wasted on stupid BS that neither benefited the bottom line nor helped the customers out was unreal. They had all these fancy tools they kept rolling out that weren't ever better than having a properly trained employee doing the work, it was being done so they didn't need to have properly trained employees. For he 4 months before I quit, I was managing a bakery department and I kept getting yelled at for "over-ordering" because the computer told them that too much was being ordered, but I was looking in the back room and I couldn't order any less than I was without risking running out completely, which would also lead to being yelled at. The whole company is one big joke and if they had any real competition, they'd probably be out of business within a few years.
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It's to identify shoplifters. There's no need to use changeable price tags as part of the pricing strategy as they already have digital discounts and deals in their app that do essentially the same thing.
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@CutoutClips Yep, that's the real reason for the digital tags. I used to manage a bakery department and it can take a lot of time to sort through the tags that I've been given and figure out which ones apply and to update the prices so that the customers know how much the items cost. A lot of the price tags weren't even intended to ever be put out, they were just there so that I'd know there'd been a change in pricing so that when I printed item tags I could put the right amount on or change how much I was putting out. The changing of prices to screw with individual customers isn't likely to happen. Anybody not using their shopper card gets a generic price, and the actual adjustments to prices are done via digital deals and coupons which are more likely to be seen by customers and are less likely to be seen by customers for which the deal wasn't intended and the issues of prices on the shelves no longer being consistent between when the customer picks the item up and when they get to the checkout.
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@markminch1906 They are unlikely to. It's more effective to give better personalized coupons than to try to individualize the prices.
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@youdontknowme5969 Department managers don't make much more than regular associates do. And, there's a continual increase in stuff that they want done without an increase in people to do it. It's common to get a cut in hours in anticipation of a new technology bringing increased efficiency, but nobody follows up to see if the gains materialized. And in many cases, I noticed that the new tech was less efficient.
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@youdontknowme5969 I used to work at a Kroger subsidiary and the woman that handles most of the promotional signs for the store tried to explain the then new promotion they were running and my eyes crossed as I got confused by the whole thing just because of how complicated it was because it wasn't a discount on what you were buying, or money back on future purchases or a redeemible toy. You got points, but you only got the points if you bought enough in a single transaction and you had to redeem those points for something else, and there was this list of things you could get or something like that. Granted, I've got ADHD and likely autism, but I'm a pretty sharp person and I just couldn't understand what was going on. And I was working in a store with a lot of immigrants and I would never have been able to explain it to even the native English speakers.
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@Burgee_6289 Often times that's the case, not always, but it should always say if you can buy just one of those items for $2 rather than having to buy both. Occasionally, you had to buy both though.
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@IrishFinalExit That's how pretty much all of them are going to be going eventually. Paper coupons are a massive pain that most people don't really want to deal with. The fact that you also have to use an app that allows the store to track your purchases just ensures that it will be sooner rather than later.
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They probably won't. It's easier to just change the discounts and coupons being given based on a customer's shopping history with their club card than to change the price. I totally get why people assume that they'd want to use these to change the prices for individual customers, but there's so many issues that can crop up with that, and few customers complain about the discounts they get with digital coupons.
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@bp6942 Sort of, it pisses them off because there are efficiency metrics that apply and can cause issues.
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@remyllebeau77 I cant' comment on other divisions, but the Kroger subsidiary that I was working for was testing them in a small number of locations. If people in those locations refuse to shop there until the tags go away, it could still happen. That being said, the real issue with them is that there isn't any enforcement agency that would go in and verify that the tags aren't being changed inappropriately. I think if there were stings on that sort of thing, it would probably make people feel more comfortable about it. The shelf tags that go up there are often times wrong due to how many have to be updated and how often that happens. As far as tying the cameras into that, I don't think that's likely to happen anytime soon. That's mostly for the purpose of identifying people that are known to not be allowed and counting how many people are in the store. They're far more likely to keep the current program where they give people discount coupons in the app rather than trying to mess with the prices that are displayed. Especially since there might be several people in the area and they generally have to honor the price tag except in a few exceptions.
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