Shoppers worried about license-plate cameras like Flock may want to look at what retailers have on file at the U.S. Patent Office. Walmart holds or has applied for more than a dozen patents describing ways to track shoppers and adjust prices, according to a report by the watchdog group Groundwork Collaborative. One granted patent, U.S. 11,687,872, filed in 2018 and approved in 2023, describes electronic shelf labels that can change prices remotely and in real time. The patent gives an example of a shopper with tuna in a scan-and-go cart being shown a different price on mayonnaise, and also describes adjusting prices based on supply and demand. Other pending applications cited in the report describe the use of facial recognition, in-store cameras, Wi-Fi signals, shoppers’ biometric reactions to products and social media monitoring. Walmart says a patent shows only what a technology could do, not what the company uses, and there is no documented evidence that these systems are operating in stores. Walmart CEO John Furner said in an open letter this month that the company does not set individual prices using customers’ personal data. The patents are not the first of their kind for the retailer, which filed for a system in 2017 to detect unhappy customers through facial expressions at checkout and in 2018 for a shopping-cart handle that could read a shopper’s heart rate and grip. Patent filings are common among large retailers and often never become products, but privacy advocates say the filings show where the industry may be headed and are calling for clearer rules on how stores collect and use shopper data. Sources: Gizmodo, Mashable, Truthout/Common Dreams, Retail Technology Innovation Hub, PenniesToSave.com.
