CEJ #4

Digital Tags Help Ensure the Price Is Right

Stross, Randall

New York Times

February 9

Technology

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/technology/digital-tags-help-ensure-that-the-price-is-right.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology&_r=0

Have you ever wondered how times stores put a price on an item, and then there’s a different price on the screen for it when you go to check out?  There is a lot.  That’s why more and more stores are getting digital tags for their items, to ensure that customers get their things for the right price.  Most stores put about 5000 items on sale per week and remove the sale prices from a different set of 5000.  That’s what leads to mistakes, if you're changing 10,000 paper tags per week.  A digital tag and sensor maker, in San Jose, called Altierre, is selling the most of these digital tags right now.  They have a gray screen with black text, to save batteries, like calculators.  However, stores aren't switching all at once to this new idea.  The most probable answer is that they are afraid if they try it all at once, they will lose shoppers.
I think that this is a good thing because with this new technology, stores are less likely to make mistakes with their prices, because they can change the prices on their items without having to print all the tiny price tags out and put them on the shelves; they just change it on the computer.  Also, with these digital tags, less paper is wasted from changing 10,000 tags a week.  There are roughly 1.5 million stores in the United States.  That means that about 15 billion tags are produced per week.  That wastes a lot of paper.  So these digital tags are going to be really good.