Walmart’s CEO rules out personalised pricing, including by its AI assistant

Walmart will not use a shopper’s income, shopping history or urgency to charge them more, chief executive John Furner said in a letter to customers posted on 25 September. The pledge also covers Sparky, the retailer’s AI shopping assistant.

“I want to tell you where we stand: We price the product, not the person,” Furner wrote.

The letter comes as Walmart rolls out digital shelf labels, which let stores change prices from a central system. Roughly 2,300 Walmart US locations already used them in March. The labels should be chain-wide within a year, Walmart said at the time. Some shoppers, consumer advocates and lawmakers have raised concerns about the labels, the Associated Press reported.

Three commitments

Furner set out three commitments. Walmart does not set prices based on who a customer is or the time of day, and will not start. Its shopping tools, Sparky included, will not use what customers share to raise prices. Nor will they hide cheaper options that meet their needs. And customers decide whether to share extra details for more personalised help.

“When you engage with Sparky, that’s an invitation to serve you better, not to use your personal information to set a personalized price,” he wrote.

Other retailers have their own assistants. Instacart and Shipt both offer AI-built carts, and Apple is adding an assistant to its Store app.

Prices can still change, Furner said. Walmart lowers them when it can pass on savings. Sometimes it raises them because an item costs more to buy or transport. Staff will keep overseeing pricing, and Walmart will test its technology against the commitments.

The digital labels help the shelf price match what rings up at checkout, the letter says. They also save staff the time spent swapping paper tags. On its page about the labels, Walmart says every customer sees the same price. The weather, the time of day and who is at the shelf make no difference.

The regulator’s view

On 19 August, the Federal Trade Commission asked for comment on a draft policy statement on personalised pricing. That means using personal data to price by what a company thinks a shopper will spend.

“When consumers see a listed price, they expect it to be same price that everyone else sees, not the retailer’s estimate of how much they are willing to pay based on their personal data,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson.

The FTC cannot ban personalised pricing in all circumstances, Ferguson said. But businesses that do not tell consumers how their data sets a price may be breaking the FTC Act, he added. Retailers that imply a price is fixed when it varies by person risk misleading customers, the draft says. Comments closed on 18 September.

In June, a lawsuit in California named BP, Walmart and 7-Eleven over AI-set petrol prices.