Got a lot of responses to our coverage of the national backlash against electronic shelf labels, and concerns about dynamic/surge pricing.
MNB reader Rudy Dory wrote:
We have had ESLs for over twenty years. We have never had a complaint about surge pricing. Wanting to ban ESLs in smaller units like ours would penalize people like us for something Walmart might choose is inherently bad. The risk of looking greedy in our communities is not worth the grief.
From another reader:
Regarding DSLs, the arguments to ban them are seriously short-sighted and weak. They are a boon to efficiency and as you said, they’re just a way for stores to do the things they already do manually. They save a ton of labor in store and are much more likely to be accurate. That last point is the one stores can win on with the shopper, perhaps.
It’s not like this is truly new technology. Schnucks has successfully used them in all stores around St Louis for a couple of years. I go far enough back to remember when Mackenthun’s in Waconia, MN started using them probably 15 or 16 years ago.
Finally, I would add, if critics are worried about “surge” pricing, how do they feel about online platforms like Amazon where they could quite literally show a different price to every customer and change it by the hour? This pearl-clutching just needs to stop.
From MNB reader Mark Heckman:
When those who don’t understand retailing try to regulate it, poor decisions are surely soon to follow. Dynamic pricing, coupled with AI will only be a viable tool for retailers if it is perceived by the shopper to be a value for the shopper. If Walmart or others abuse it, demand for those items and the retailer will drop and as will sales.
Moreover, dynamic pricing tools that predict sales based upon a demand curve have been in the marketplace for a couple of decades. Leveraging those tools through ESLs in the physical store at the shelf will allow retailers to be more efficient and effective in adjusting prices and promotions (both up and down) a practice that has been the norm for quite some time. With labor costs on the rise, reducing the expense of price changes through digital pricing could actually generate resources for the retailer to be more price competitive, not less.
I make this prediction in today’s innovation Conversation, but I’ll repeat it here.
One of the byproducts of the current backlash against ESLs will be a move in certain states (or even localities) to require item-pricing. If they can’t figure out how to ban ESLs, they’ll make them irrelevant by forcing retailers to label every item on shelves.
It’ll be a nightmare for retailers. But I think it is inevitable.
I made the following observation the other day about bricks-and-mortar retailing vs. e-grocery:
“So many of the items (90 percent? 95 percent?) that most food retailers sell are the same items sold by every other food retailer. And, so many of the items sold by most food retailers are items that are not improved or enhanced by the physical store experience – we might as well buy them online.”
Prompting one MNB reader to write:
That line brought back many thoughts from the book “Agentry Agenda” around the undifferentiated and increasingly commoditized nature of branded products and establishing shopper relationships, knowing their need, and delivering a welcoming and differentiated shopping experience. That book was well ahead of its time.
It was.
Also got a lot of responses to my criticisms of technology that allows advertising to be shown on at-home smart refrigerators.
MNB reader Steven Ritchey wrote:
The story about advertising on smart fridges makes me glad I’m still using a 15 year old Kenmore fridge built by LG. All it does is keep my food cold, and my frozen food frozen, plus dispense chilled water and ice. I get enough ads elsewhere. Somehow I believe they need to be smarter about what ads get delivered into what medium. I know on sports talk radio I get tired of products geared to men to make them grow hair again, act like they’re still in their twenties, at least physically, and who best to gamble on sports with. I know they are trying to reach mean aged 25-45. Meanwhile, I’m 67, I have no desire to be in my 20’s again, my hair in thinning, which is ok. I’m not that vain about my looks, I’m getting older, and I don’t mind looking my age, I think I’ve earned that right.
MNB reader Margaret Mittelstadt wrote:
My dad famously once said, “If you want to know the weather, just stick your head out the window.”
He’s also known for rushing the whole family into the basement – then casually heading back outside during a tornado warning, sirens blaring, Old Milwaukee in hand, to scan the sky for a funnel cloud.
I rather enjoy my analog appliances.
And from another reader:
On paper, I can certainly see the appeal from an advertising perspective for this; especially in the grocery industry. However, it just feels… wrong, and I would think you run a greater risk of having a very negative brand interaction in such a space. I don’t want anger to be someone’s reaction when they interact with my brand. I’m reminded of a scene in the show Futurama from around the year 2000 about invasive ads and how they become normalized. It’s worth a watch if you have 90 seconds.
This comment from an MNB reader about retailers who talk about consumers being more “choiceful.”
“Choiceful.” I’m in the supermarket business and this is the first time I’ve seen that word. OK, people, quit blaming the consumer for not making the choices you though we’d make. I see it all the time, it’s never the executives’ mistake, never a manager’s mistake that something didn’t sell, never the person who thought this new product was a good idea and we’d be all over it. You made a mistake, learn from it, admit it. It’s how businesses improve, how they get better at what they do. Blaming the consumer for not thinking as you do is counterproductive. Plus, to be honest, it’s not a good look for the company if everything that doesn’t work is the consumer’s fault, I know I don’t like people who cannot admit they made a mistake.
Reacting to my visit to the Arizona wine country, MNB reader Mark Chesney wrote:
Merkin vineyards “differentiating itself” is part and parcel of the owner. Maynard James Keenan is probably best known as the lead singer for rock band Tool. They certainly are different than their contemporaries in terms of the style of their music!
I must admit that I’d never heard of Keenan nor Tool before my visit to Merkin. Clearly, a gap in my education.
I referenced a New York Times piece the other day about the underwhelming impact of vertical farming, which prompted MNB reader Tom Stenzel to write:
Agree with your comment on vertical farms – “not yet.” What these early farms proved is that we can grow healthy fresh produce indoors. Doing so profitably today probably not, at least not in the US. But the NYT article failed to talk about the successful farms in the Middle East and other countries with less access to domestic production. With climate pressure, supply chain disruptions and environmental concerns only growing, we shouldn’t discount the pioneers looking to the future.
You’re right. Climate change inevitably will have us adapting agricultural solutions now being used in the Middle East, largely because of public policy decisions that ignore reality.
Regarding our piece about Barnes & Noble’s revived fortunes, MNB reader Rich Heiland wrote:
Maybe it’s the old fart in me but I like the idea that Barnes and Noble is sticking to stores. I grew up on Library Avenue in Wilmington, Ohio. Our house was at one end of the short street, the library at the other. As a child I spent hours in that library. Later, as an adult, I had the same kind of experience in Barnes and Noble. I liked that I could pull a book off the shelf, find a quiet nook and read enough of it to know if I wanted to buy. Sometimes I’d have a book with me and just sit off in some corner. I think at our very core there is something about physical presence that we need, something we can’t get on-line. Thanks for the reminder…I have a Barnes and Noble not far away and I think I will start dropping in more often.
One thing that I neglected to mention the other day was a decision made by Barnes & Noble that, I think, improved its street cred – its stores would feature “banned book” sections that would highlight books that some elements were trying to ban from libraries and classrooms.
That’s no small sample: PEN America reports that during the 2024-2025 school year, it “recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts.” Barnes & Noble saw these as being a direct affront to its business model, value proposition and, perhaps most importantly, values.
Gives it a lot of credibility in my book.
Regarding the impact that a national movement against alcohol consumption is having on the restaurant business, one MNB reader wrote:
A possible restaurant solution related to this story, that is being used at retail.
I visited Spec’s the #1 liquor store in Texas last week, looking for a THC/ Hemp drink. I found a massive display of Uncle Arnies THC drinks among other brands in the store. So I found and asked the manager, how are the sales of the infused drinks? His response was interesting, our wine sales are down 10% he didn’t mention liquor but our THC/ Hemp drink sales are flying off the shelf. He also mentioned one of his best wine customers was diagnosed with cancer. He is now drinking THC/ Hemp drinks exclusively. While these drinks are a hot debate with the government, I believe it’s only a matter of time before they approve federally.
So I asked, are the restaurants missing a selling/ profit opportunity?
I also got this email from MNB reader John Conroy about some of the difficulties I encountered when my travels to Kalamazoo from the Western Michigan university Food Marketing Conference resulted in some frustration and detours because of the serious runway accident at LaGuardia Airport early this week:
Given all of the technology available, I found a few things “interesting” about how you found out about the issue and the difficulty rescheduling. First, it would seem that the airline could have sent an alert about the fight cancelations/delays before it even hit the news – similar to the ones delivered for the normal flight delays – but with a note that they were working on rescheduling and providing links and/or phone numbers if you wanted to work on it before they gave you options.
Second, they should be able to use AI to provide a list of options for you to choose what fits your needs ….and highlight if the options are at a different airport. And providing a note at the end to update rental cars and hotels if needed would be an over the top touch that makes you feel they care about you. This would make them as you stated “not just a source of product, but a resource of information for customers”.
I take your point.
I do need to emphasize that my travel problems were insignificant compared to the issues faced by the people directly affected by the accident. I really don’t want to complain – I got to Kalamazoo, I did my gig, and got home. (Also, I had no security line issues at the airports. There were lines, though not as long as those in places like Houston and Atlanta, but I have both TSA Pre-Check and Clear, so I was able to bypass even those. And, for the record, I found the TSA folks who were working without pay to be utterly professional and cordial.)
To be clear, I might have known about the accident earlier had I checked my iPhone when I got out of bed. But I didn’t want to wake anyone – it was 5:15 am, and I wanted to take a shower, get dressed, let the dogs out, and get in the car as quickly as possible. Once I got in the car and headed for the highway, I turned on the news, and then pretty quickly knew I had to turn around and go back home.
Delta had, in fact, sent me a text and email informing me of the problems and offering me alternatives. The problem was that none of the choices would allow me to get to Detroit on Monday; they offered me flights from LaGuardia later in the week. Not only was I not confident about LaGuardia being reopened in a timely fashion, but I needed to be there on Monday so I could make the drive to Kalamazoo. (At one point I checked Waze – it would take me about 11 hours to drive there, if necessary. I was prepared to hit the road if a flight could not be arranged.) This was all AI-generated, best I could tell.
When I finally talked to a Delta representative – no small achievement, as you can imagine – I convinced him to give me what ended up being the last seat on a flight to Bradley International in Hartford/Springfield, but he kept insisting that I had to stay with my original return flight to LaGuardia, and didn’t seem to care that my car would be at Bradley.
Which is when I reached out to my travel agent (I hadn’t wanted to bother him early in the morning), and he solved the whole problem so I could fly out of and return to Bradley. He removed the friction, which was the point I wanted to make about great service.
I’m not annoyed at Delta – they had a lot to deal with on Monday. But the larger point about a travel agent being a valuable resource remains a legitimate one, I think.
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