Beyond the Backlash

Groceries are expensive. Even if one makes a decent salary, you can’t help but be astonished at the price increases. I think something has quietly changed at the grocery store, and because it happened so gradually, most of us barely noticed. 

For a long time, pricing was simple: same item, same store, same price for everyone. A company looked at what something cost to make, added a fair markup, and that was that. That’s not how it works anymore. 

In her new book Gouged, economist Lindsay Owens explains what’s replaced it. Companies now use your personal data, including things like your browsing history, your zip code, your income, and even how long your mouse hovers over an item, to figure out exactly how much you, personally, will pay before you walk away. As Owens puts it, “The right price is the one they can get you to fork over.” Not what something costs to make. It comes down to what retailers think you’ll tolerate. 

Take Walmart. The company recently patented “smart cart” technology that can change prices while you’re still shopping. Scan a can of tuna, and the price of mayonnaise sitting a few aisles over can quietly tick up because the system has already figured out you’re probably making tuna salad tonight and will need that jar. It isn’t a sale. It’s closer to the opposite of one. 

Walmart’s new AI chatbot, Sparky, works the same way. It nudges shoppers toward bigger carts so effectively that it’s reportedly raising online checkout revenue by 40 percent, and the company’s CEO has told investors he loves it. 

The people who feel this the hardest are families with low and moderate incomes, who have the least room in their budgets to absorb a price that moves against them without warning and often the least time to shop around and catch it happening. 

This isn’t one company cutting corners. It’s a new corporate playbook, built quietly and applied item by item, reshaping what groceries actually cost before shoppers even reach the register. 

Maybe, as consumers, we should stop asking whether prices are fair and start asking who’s deciding what “fair” means for us in real time.