When Grocery Prices Can Change in a Blink: A Shopper’s Fear of Digital Shelf Tags

I used to think the little paper price tags on supermarket shelves were boring. Static. Reassuring, even.

You’d walk in, see a price, and reasonably assume it would still be the same by the time you reached the checkout. But lately, I’ve started noticing something different, small digital screens replacing the paper tags. The big chains in Australia like Woolworths and Coles have been rolling them out more and more. They look neat. Efficient. Modern. And honestly? They make me uneasy.

These are e-ink price tags, the same kind of display technology used in e-readers. Supermarkets call them electronic shelf labels. From a business perspective, I understand the appeal. Prices can be updated instantly from head office. Staff don’t have to print and replace thousands of paper tickets every week. Fewer mistakes. Less waste. Greater “efficiency.” That all sounds reasonable.

But here’s what worries me: if prices can change instantly, what’s to stop them changing constantly?

We’ve already seen how airlines and rideshare apps adjust pricing based on demand. When more people want something, the price goes up. That logic makes commercial sense, but groceries aren’t flights to Bali or a Friday night Uber. Groceries are essentials. Milk, bread, mince, nappies. The idea that the price of everyday items could fluctuate throughout the day depending on how many people are buying them doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

Right now, supermarkets say the electronic tags are mainly about efficiency and accuracy. And that may well be true, for now. But the technology clearly allows for dynamic pricing. If a product is selling quickly, a system could raise the price in real time. If demand drops, it could discount automatically. If a competitor down the road adjusts their specials, prices could shift within minutes. The infrastructure is already sitting there on the shelf edge.

As a shopper, that creates a new kind of uncertainty. Will the pasta I buy every Tuesday be $2.40 at 10am but $2.70 at 6pm? Could prices increase before a public holiday weekend because demand is higher? If stock is running low, does the price go up instead of down? The whole point of grocery shopping, at least in my mind, is predictability. You budget. You plan. You compare stores. You make decisions based on relatively stable pricing patterns.

There’s also the psychological side. When prices were printed on paper, changing them required effort. Someone had to physically walk down the aisle and replace the ticket. That friction acted as a kind of natural brake. Digital tags remove that friction entirely. A head office decision, or an algorithm, could alter thousands of prices in seconds. That’s powerful. Maybe too powerful.

Transparency is another concern. If prices can change on the fly, how would shoppers know? Would there be disclosures about dynamic pricing? Would we be told if prices are being adjusted based on demand patterns? Or would it all happen quietly, justified as “market responsiveness”? Trust in supermarkets has already been under pressure with cost-of-living concerns. Introducing technology that could make pricing more opaque risks deepening that mistrust.

I’m not against technology. I appreciate innovation. If electronic shelf labels reduce errors, like being charged more at the checkout than the shelf price, that’s a good thing. If they help discount items close to expiry to reduce food waste, that’s positive too. But there’s a difference between smarter inventory management and algorithm-driven price swings on essential goods.

Maybe nothing dramatic will happen. Maybe the digital tags will simply replace paper and life will go on much the same. But as I push my trolley past those quiet little screens, I can’t shake the feeling that something fundamental has shifted. The price of groceries used to feel fixed, at least for a while. Now, it feels fluid.

And when you’re already stretching every dollar, “fluid” is not a comforting word.