Electronic Shelf Labels: Do Customers Trust Stores That Use Them?
Most shoppers expect digital price tags to raise prices, and trust follows what they see at the register. The public record, the research, and a worked example.
Most shoppers say they do not trust electronic shelf labels yet, and in the stores that use them, trust follows what customers see at the register and on the shelf. In a poll commissioned by the UFCW, the grocery workers' union, and released in May 2026, 65% of US voters said the labels will raise grocery prices, while a published study of a US grocer's prices found almost no surge pricing after the labels went in. The gap between what customers expect and what they experience is where a grocer wins or loses trust, and Dimension Labs is built to measure it store by store, from what shoppers write in reviews, surveys and chats, joined to their trips.
Below: the dated public record, what the research and surveys say, a worked example on synthetic sample data for a fictional regional grocery chain with 50 stores, and what to check before a rollout. For the wider question of variable prices in restaurants and stores, see dynamic pricing: how customers react.
Will customers think electronic shelf labels mean surge pricing?
Many will at first, because that is how the labels have been described in public. Walmart announced in June 2024 that it was expanding digital shelf labels to 2,300 stores by 2026, describing them as a way for associates to change a price in minutes instead of about two days. In August 2024, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bob Casey wrote to Kroger, which had begun using the labels in 2018 and had them in 500 stores, warning that they could be used for surge pricing. Grocery Dive reported the letter's phrase that the labels could let grocers "calibrate price increases to extract maximum profits", and Kroger's reply: "Any test of electronic shelf tags is to lower prices more for customers where it matters most."
Polls since then show the same expectation: in the UFCW poll, 67% favored banning both electronic shelf labels and surveillance pricing in grocery stores. A poll commissioned by a union that represents grocery workers measures what voters expect, and it tells a grocer what its own customers may assume on the first day the labels appear.
Public announcements, surveys and research
Shoppers expect the worst from digital price tags; a published price study found almost no surge
Dated record on electronic shelf labels in US grocery, 2018 to 2026.
| When | Who | What was said or found |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 to 2024 | Kroger | Began using electronic shelf labels in 2018 and expanded them to 500 stores (as described in the senators' letter) |
| Jun 6, 2024 | Walmart | Expanding digital shelf labels to 2,300 stores by 2026; a price change that took about two days now takes minutes |
| Aug 2024 | Senators Warren and Casey | Letter to Kroger warning the labels could let grocers "calibrate price increases to extract maximum profits" |
| Aug 2024 | Kroger | "Any test of electronic shelf tags is to lower prices more for customers where it matters most." |
| May 2025 | Researchers at UT Austin, UC San Diego and Northwestern | At a US grocer that adopted the labels from October 2022, temporary price hikes hit 0.005% of products a day before; after adoption the share rose by 0.0006 percentage points |
| Fall 2025 | University at Buffalo survey, 2,011 shoppers | 72% confident shelf prices match checkout; 71% would switch retailers over repeated pricing errors |
| May 2026 | GBAO poll commissioned by the UFCW union | 65% of voters think the labels will raise grocery prices |
Do electronic shelf labels lead to surge pricing?
In a published study of US grocery prices, almost none. Researchers at UT Austin, UC San Diego and Northwestern studied prices from 2019 to 2024 at a US grocery chain that began adopting the labels in October 2022, across 114 stores in four states and more than 180 million product-level observations. Short-lived price increases touched 0.005% of products on a given day before the labels, and the share rose by 0.0006 percentage points after; discounts became slightly more common. One of the authors, Robert Sanders, summed it up: "We find there is essentially no change in pricing behavior after these digital labels are installed."
That is one chain, and a shopper in your store has not read the study. The finding is still useful to an operator: it shows that the labels do not have to change prices for customers to worry about them, so the trust question is about what customers see and are told, which is in your hands.
Do electronic shelf labels hurt customer trust in grocery stores?
They can help it, because the trust shoppers lose most often comes from a price that differs between shelf and register. In a University at Buffalo survey of 2,011 US shoppers in fall 2025, 72% said they were confident that shelf prices match checkout prices, 43% said pricing errors would cost a store significant or complete trust, and 71% said they would switch retailers over repeated errors. Labels that update the shelf from the same system as the register remove the most common cause of that gap. Walmart made the case in its announcement too, describing price changes made in minutes and a better customer experience.
In the sample, reviews mentioning a shelf price that did not match the register fell from 5.4 to 1.7 per 100 at stores that switched and told shoppers, and from 4.9 to 1.9 at stores that switched without a note, while stores on paper tags stayed near 4.5. Reviews worried that prices change during the day rose from 0.4 to 2.4 per 100 where shoppers were not told, and from 0.2 to 0.8 where they were.
Sample data, fictional grocery chain
Register mismatches fell where the labels went in; worry about changing prices rose most where shoppers were not told
Reviews mentioning each topic, per 100 reviews, in the 26 weeks before and after the switch. Synthetic data.
BeforeAfter
Complaints that prices are too high barely moved anywhere, from 8.0 to 8.8 per 100 at stores without a note and 7.8 to 8.2 on paper tags. So the new worry was about whether prices might start moving during the day, and one sign at the shelf edge answers that.
How do shoppers react when a store switches to digital price tags?
Mostly with a question, and what the store does with the question decides the visits. In the sample, trips per loyalty member rose 1.2% at stores that told shoppers what the labels were for (90% range 0.7% to 1.8%) and fell 1.0% at stores that switched without a note (-1.6% to -0.5%), each against stores still on paper tags.
Sample data, fictional grocery chain
Stores that told shoppers what the labels were for gained trips; stores that did not lost a few
Change in trips per loyalty member per week after the switch, against 30 stores still on paper tags, with 90% ranges. Synthetic data.
No change
A plain before-and-after would have read both groups as losses: -0.5% and -2.7%, in a half-year when trips at paper-tag stores also fell 1.7%. The worry also faded on its own. At stores without a note, reviews worried about changing prices ran at 4.8 per 100 in the first four weeks and 0.8 in weeks 21 to 24, as shoppers saw prices hold. Telling shoppers on day one gets the same result months sooner.
What should we check before rolling out electronic shelf labels?
How often your customers already mention price mismatches. Count reviews, surveys and chats about a shelf price that differed at the register, by store. That is the trust the labels can win back, and the stores with the most to gain.
What your customers already say about price changes. Comments about prices "always going up" or "changing every week" show where shoppers are primed to read the labels as surge pricing.
What you will tell shoppers, and where. A shelf-edge note, a sign at the entrance, a line in the app: say what the labels are for and when prices change.
Which stores go first, and which wait. Install in waves and keep comparable stores on paper tags for a quarter, so you can read the change against them over the same weeks.
What you will measure. Mismatch complaints, worry about changing prices and trips per member, by store, against the stores that have not switched yet.
How does a customer world model answer a question like this?
By joining what customers said to what they did and to the dates the business and the world acted. A customer world model keeps four layers: what customers say (the mismatch and surge-worry comments), what they do (trips and baskets), what the business did (each store's install week and whether it posted a note), and what the world did (a news cycle about surge pricing, a senators' letter, the season). With those layers joined, the first wave of installs tells you what the next wave will do, as a range, if the relationship measured in the first wave holds.
That is the argument Andrew Hong makes in your customers already told you what your next decision will do: the evidence for the next decision is already in what your own customers wrote and did after the last one. A poll tells you what voters in general expect; your own reviews tell you what your shoppers expected and whether they kept coming. The method for testing a decision before rollout is in how to test a business decision before you make it, and for reading price talk in comments, do customers think you're too expensive.
How does Dimension Labs help a grocer roll out shelf labels?
Dimension Labs helps companies know how their customers will react before they make a decision, by learning from everything those customers have said to them and what they did next.
For a grocery or retail operator, the platform brings every place shoppers talk about price into one view: Google reviews, app reviews, surveys, customer service chats and calls, for every store. It connects them to loyalty trips, POS data and each store's install date with little setup; the join to CRM and revenue data and effects with confidence intervals are on Prove ($2,999 a month) and up. It enriches every comment with Dimensions written for your stores, such as "shelf price did not match the register", "worried prices change during the day" or "prices too high", usable by store operations, pricing and marketing alike; custom Dimensions start on Discover ($999 a month). And it turns the results into a deck, a dashboard, a PDF or executive report, or an interactive data story for each wave of the rollout, shared across the company.
Brands such as Ralph Lauren, the NBA, Dropbox, Netflix and Disney use Dimension Labs to turn what their customers say into decisions.
When something simpler is the better choice: if you run a handful of stores and want to know whether shoppers noticed, a manager reading the week's reviews and a sign at the door may be all you need. Dimension Labs earns its place when you are rolling out across dozens or hundreds of stores, the reactions arrive in several channels, and you need to know store by store whether trust and trips rose or fell before the next wave goes in.
FAQ
Will customers think electronic shelf labels mean surge pricing?
Many expect it: 65% of voters in a union-commissioned May 2026 poll said the labels will raise grocery prices. Telling shoppers what the labels are for at install narrows that worry. In the sample, it rose to 0.8 per 100 reviews where shoppers were told and 2.4 where they were not.
Do electronic shelf labels hurt customer trust in grocery stores?
Not by themselves. Pricing errors cost trust, and the labels can reduce them: 71% of shoppers in a fall 2025 survey said they would switch retailers over repeated pricing errors. Where trust falls, it is usually because shoppers were not told what changed.
Do electronic shelf labels lead to surge pricing?
The published study of a US grocer that adopted them found almost none: short-lived price increases touched 0.005% of products a day before and rose by 0.0006 percentage points after.
What is the best way to measure how shoppers react to digital price tags?
For a chain rolling out across many stores, Dimension Labs: it reads every review, survey and chat with the same labels, joins them to trips by store on Prove, and compares stores that switched with stores that have not yet. For a few stores, reading the week's reviews by hand works.
Bring one export of reviews or customer comments from stores before and after a change at the shelf, with the dates, and start with one file to see what your shoppers said about prices and where. Every plan from Explore to Scale starts with a 14-day free trial.