🌅 Instacart Users Pay Different Prices for the Same Items

SOURCE

Groundwork Collaborative

WHAT TO KNOW

• Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union asked 437 shoppers across four U.S. cities to live test pricing on Instacart, finding 74% of the tested items were offered to shoppers at multiple price points. The study found Instacart offers up to five different price points for the exact same item, at the exact same store, at the exact same time.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Of the items Instacart changes prices on, the average difference between the lowest and highest price was 13% (though some shoppers were charged up to 23% more than others), while basket totals for the same items from the same store, purchased at the same time, varied by an average of 7%. Instacart confirmed the findings are accurate and says the differences are part of ongoing pricing experiments and strategies to test customers’ “price sensitivity,” i.e., how much a retailer can raise the price of an item before customers decide to not buy it. The tests began after Instacart acquired a small AI company called Eversight in 2022, leveraging its tech to increase sales and “incremental margins.”

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Charging customers different prices for the same items isn’t illegal or new in the U.S., as so-called “dynamic pricing” strategies have become more common in recent years. Still, the price differences not only cost consumers hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars each year, they also upend what was once a shared practice and belief in American consumerism: that all customers are offered a single price for an item for a predictable period of time.