Walmart Inc. President and CEO John Furner has issued a public letter committing the retailer to not using shoppers’ income, purchase history or urgency to set prices, and to hold its AI shopping assistant and digital shelf labels to the same standard. The Sept. 25 letter, addressed to customers and Sam’s Club members, frames the pledge as an extension of Walmart’s everyday low price model.
The letter arrives as “surveillance pricing,” the use of personal data to set individualized prices, has drawn Federal Trade Commission study, state legislation in Illinois, Minnesota and elsewhere and consumer scrutiny of grocery delivery pricing tests. Furner did not name a specific trigger but said he had heard concerns about companies using data and technology to charge shoppers more.
“We price the product, not the person,” Furner wrote. “Using someone’s income, shopping history or moment of need to charge them more would violate the EDLP promise our business model is built on. We won’t do it.”
Three commitments
Furner laid out three pledges he said would hold as technology changes:
- Walmart will not set different prices based on who the shopper is or the time of day. Income, shopping history, urgency or what the company thinks a customer could pay will not change the price.
- The company’s shopping tools, including its AI assistant Sparky, will not use information customers share to raise prices or hide lower-priced options that meet their needs.
- Walmart will continue to let customers decide whether to share additional details for personalized help, be clear about how it uses that data and protect it.
Furner added that Walmart employees will continue to oversee pricing and that the company will monitor and test its technology against the commitments.
Defending digital shelf labels
The letter also addressed electronic shelf labels, which some customers have questioned. Furner said the labels exist to keep shelf prices consistent with what rings up at checkout and to free associates from replacing paper tags by hand, a job he described from personal experience as time consuming.
“We’ve never used the relationships our associates have with customers to charge more, and we won’t do that with AI,” Furner wrote. “When you engage with Sparky, that’s an invitation to serve you better, not to use your personal information to set a personalized price.”
Love this from Walmart!