Walmart’s new pricing patents spark fears of surveillance: ‘Are they going to charge you a different price if they know who you are?’

Selective pricing. Surveillance pricing. Personalized pricing. Dynamic pricing. The terms are flying around, but they don’t all mean the same thing. A price that changes with demand is one concern; a price that changes because a store knows who is shopping is another. Even the Federal Trade Commission is weighing when companies need to tell customers their personal data helped set a price. 

Now, retail discount giant Walmart has patented new ways to use technology to help set prices. One system could automatically change markdowns on its website while another could predict demand and recommend prices. For a company that has built its reputation on low prices, the idea of using more data to help set them is bound to get concerned shoppers’ attention. The filings’ arrival amid a wider debate about shopping data raises a separate question: Could knowing more about a customer eventually change what the customer pays? 

A patent describes an invention a company wants to protect. However, it doesn’t necessarily tell shoppers whether the company ever put it to work. When Walmart’s pricing patents drew attention on social media earlier this year, some shoppers connected them to fears about surveillance pricing: charging people different prices for the same product based on information about them. The patents don’t show Walmart doing........

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