Walmart Price Signage Goes Digital

The retailer will replace paper shelf labels with digital screens at 2,300 stores.

June 12, 2024

Walmart plans to replace paper shelf labels at thousands of stores with digital screens, which will allow the retailer to update prices on over 120,000 items within minutes, reported Reuters.

Updating the pricing of paper shelf labels on a weekly basis takes a store employee about two days, but the digital labels can be changed in minutes through the retailer’s mobile app for workers, Me@Walmart.

“The new labels are small square screens that look very much like the paper labels they will replace,” wrote Reuters. They will also enable workers to pick products for online order fulfillment faster, the company said in a statement.

The digital shelf price tags will be in 2,300 stores by 2026.

“Merchants typically provided pricing updates to Walmart on a weekly basis, but with digital price tags, they can pass on price changes to Walmart daily,” Walmart spokesperson Cristina Rodrigues said. Rodrigues said these prices are updated overnight, left the same during the day and revisited again after store hours or before the store opens the next day,” according to Reuters.

Greg Cathey, senior vice president of transformation and innovation at Walmart, confirmed that the digital screens would not lead to dynamic pricing over the course of the day, where prices might change by the hour or during peak shopping times.

QSRs, including Wendy’s, and European grocers have been experimenting with dynamic pricing. Read more about how retailers are implementing the strategy here.

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