Paper shelf price labels are being phased out at thousands of Walmart stores. On Thursday, Walmart announced an expanded rollout of digital shelf labels, enabling the company to update prices on over 120,000 items within minutes.
Traditionally, updating paper shelf labels took a store worker about two days each week. With digital labels, prices can be updated in just two minutes using the company’s mobile app for workers, Me@Walmart, according to Walmart.
The new labels are small square screens that closely resemble the paper labels they will replace. These digital labels will also help workers pick products for online order fulfillment more quickly, Walmart stated.
By 2026, the digital shelf tags will be implemented in 2,300 stores, said Greg Cathey, senior vice president of transformation and innovation at Walmart, which operates 4,700 U.S. stores.
The approach to pricing products has become a contentious issue recently, highlighted by the backlash against burger chain Wendy’s.
Wendy’s faced criticism on social media after its CEO suggested the possibility of “dynamic pricing” or surge pricing based on demand, particularly during peak hours. However, Cathey emphasized that Walmart has no plans to adopt such a strategy.
“It is absolutely not going to be one hour it is this price and the next hour it is not,” Cathey said during Walmart’s annual shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Merchants typically provided pricing updates to Walmart on a weekly basis. However, with digital price tags, they can pass on price changes to Walmart daily, according to Walmart spokesperson Cristina Rodrigues.
Rodrigues mentioned that these prices are updated overnight, remain the same during the day, and are revisited after store hours or before the store opens the next day.
