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As Walmart attempted to debunk research into its pricing practices by watchdog group Groundwork Collaborative on Monday, the organization released a new report detailing more than a dozen patents the $833 billion corporation holds or has applied for — all aimed at monitoring customers’ behavior to determine what products to market to them, deceiving them about an item’s price, and upcharging them.

“Corporations don’t spend years building high-tech pricing tools, hiring experts, and filing patents just to let them collect dust. They do it because they see a path to higher profit — one that runs right through everyday consumers’ budgets,” said Lindsay Owens, president and CEO of Groundwork and the author of the book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price—And What That Means for Your Wallet.

On Monday, Owens and Elizabeth Pancotti, Groundwork’s vice president of policy, advocacy, and research, released “The Walmart Watchtower: Patents Speak Louder Than Pledges,” noting that Walmart CEO John Furner just recently attempted to do damage control on Owens’ reporting in Gouged regarding the company’s artificial intelligence-enabled pricing tactics.

While Walmart executives have “openly touted” the ability of “Sparky,” the AI shopping assistant the company launched last year, to push customers to spend an average of 40% more during a shopping trip, Furner insisted last month that Walmart will “price the product, not the person.”

But Groundwork said that beyond its deployment of Sparky, “Walmart’s own investments and patents suggest that the retail giant is building a vast arsenal of tools that can be used to track shoppers and even potentially determine what they pay.”

Instacart Reportedly Using Secret AI-Powered Dynamic Pricing to Jack Up Prices

The report reveals........

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