As state lawmakers consider banning digital shelf labels, or DSLs, in New York’s grocery stores, they risk solving a problem that does not exist while making grocery shopping less accurate and more expensive in the process.
First, it is important to be clear about what digital shelf labels are. They simply display prices. They don’t collect data, track shoppers, or change prices based on who you are.
Let’s start with the basics. Grocery store pricing is inherently public. Every price displayed on a shelf is visible to every shopper in the store. If a price changes, it changes for everyone. There is no mechanism, technological or practical, for a DSL to show one price to one shopper and a different price to another. That’s not how DSLs are designed, and it is not how retail pricing works.
How do digital shelf labels work?
Digital pricing displays are not new: New Yorkers already see them every day at gas stations, fast-food drive-throughs or at Starbucks when getting a morning coffee. They are not tracking customers or personalizing prices – they simply display the same information to everyone, clearly and consistently. Digital shelf labels in a grocery store operate the same way.
Concerns about personalized or “surveillance” pricing aren’t entirely unfounded. Those practices do exist in online environments. But they rely on customer-specific data: browsing history, purchase patterns and user profiles. DSLs have no access to that information and no ability to act on it.
If anything, these electronic displays make pricing more transparent, not less. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, explicitly recognizes DSLs as an appropriate and effective way to display prices — even recommending retailers implement them to improve accuracy and efficiency in retail.
Anyone who has worked in or shopped at a grocery store knows that pricing errors occur. Paper labels must be printed, sorted, and manually replaced — often across thousands of items in a single store. Mistakes happen. Labels get missed. Prices ring up incorrectly. Digital labels solve that problem by synchronizing shelf prices with checkout systems in real time. The result is fewer discrepancies, fewer disputes at the register, and a better experience for shoppers and employees.
NIST explicitly notes that better pricing systems improve accuracy and inventory control while reducing labor costs. That’s not just an operational benefit for retailers; it translates directly into a better consumer experience.
There’s also a workforce that gets little to no attention in this debate. Grocery employees spend hours each week replacing paper tags aisle by aisle. That’s repetitive, time-consuming work that keeps employees away from helping customers or keeping shelves stocked. Digital labels eliminate that burden, allowing workers to focus on the parts of the job that actually make shopping better for customers.
Despite these clear benefits, digital shelf labels have become a proxy for broader anxieties about pricing technology.
If NY lawmakers are worried about surveillance pricing, then fix surveillance pricing
If state lawmakers are concerned about surveillance pricing, they should focus on policies that specifically target this problem. Regulating a display technology based on hypothetical future uses misses the mark.
Worse, it risks creating unintended consequences. Restricting digital shelf labels won’t stop unfair pricing practices. It will just make pricing less accurate and increase overhead cost for stores — which will mean higher prices for New York families.
Technology in retail, like in any industry, should be judged by what it does, not by what we fear it might do. Digital shelf labels improve accuracy, reduce costs for consumers and retailers, and free up workers to focus on what matters most.
New York lawmakers should focus on policies that actually protect consumers and lower costs for families — not micromanage how grocery stores display prices.
Joe Kefauver is a senior adviser to Americans For A Modern Economy, an organization committed to ensuring that local, state and federal policies reflect changing technologies that are reshaping the way consumers, businesses and communities operate in the 21st century economy.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: How a digital shelf label ban would cost New York shoppers | Opinion
Reporting by Joe Kefauver, Special to the USA TODAY Network / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
