The end of the price tag
Fortune Lindsay Owens
Secret shoppers in a Sept. 2025 experiment used Instacart to buy the same grocery basket across multiple US cities and found that prices changed between shoppers for the same items. Nearly 75 percent of items varied in price, and a dozen Lucerne eggs at the same Safeway in Washington, DC, ranged from $3.99 to $4.79. The results suggest personalized, data-driven pricing is replacing a standard checkout price, and the article ties this shift to AI pricing systems that automate large-scale experiments.
Why it matters
The modern economy has given rise to a new kind of gouging: companies can now manufacture the appearance of scarcity.
