Walmart has published an open letter disputing what it calls repeated mischaracterizations of its pricing practices by Lindsay Owens, an economist and executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic policy think tank, asking her to “correct the record.”
The Oct. 5 letter, signed by Dan Bartlett, EVP of corporate affairs for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, responds to public statements by Owens, whose recent book “Gouged” examines corporate pricing technology and whose organization has published research citing Walmart patents as evidence the retailer is building infrastructure for dynamic and personalized pricing.
“The facts are straightforward. We price products, not people,” Bartlett wrote. “Walmart does not and will not use an individual customer’s personal information, income, shopping history, urgency or willingness to pay to set an individualized price. We do not engage in dynamic pricing, raising prices in response to a hot afternoon or an approaching snowstorm, for example.”
Digital shelf labels
The letter addresses several of Owens’ claims point by point. On digital shelf labels, which Owens has described as infrastructure for “real-time dynamic pricing” that could enable higher prices for ice cream on hot days or soup during snowstorms, Bartlett wrote that the labels replace paper tags and display approved price changes more efficiently: “The ability to update a display more quickly is not evidence that Walmart uses it, nor intends to use it, for dynamic pricing.”
On patents, Bartlett wrote that a patent describes potential capabilities, not deployed practices: “Putting tuna in a customer’s cart does not cause Walmart to charge that customer more for mayonnaise. We do not do that, and we will not.”
Sparky
The letter also pushes back on Owens’ statements about Sparky, Walmart’s AI shopping assistant, which she has connected to higher customer spending. Bartlett wrote that higher average order values do not establish that customers were charged higher prices for the same items, and that information customers share with Sparky “is not used to raise their individual prices.”
“We welcome scrutiny, but criticism must be grounded in fact, not conjecture,” Bartlett wrote, offering Owens a conversation while asking her to publicly correct the statements.
The letter is the retailer’s most direct engagement yet in the growing debate over surveillance pricing, following President and CEO John Furner’s September pledge that Walmart would not use personalized pricing and the company’s recent messaging pairing digital shelf label announcements with pricing disclosures. Scrutiny of the practice has intensified across the industry, with Maryland’s first-in-the-nation ban on surveillance-based dynamic pricing taking effect Oct. 1.
Related: Walmart CEO Pledges No Personalized Pricing As Surveillance Pricing Scrutiny Grows