Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/business/instacart-algorithmic-pricing.html

Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ
The findings are the latest example of how the notion of a single price is breaking down in the digital age, a trend economists say could be pushing up some prices.
By Ben Casselman
Dec. 9, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

On a Thursday in early September, more than 40 strangers logged in to Instacart, the grocery-shopping app, to buy eggs and test a hypothesis.

Connected by videoconference, they simultaneously selected the same store — a Safeway in Washington, D.C. — and the same brand of eggs. They all chose pickup rather than delivery.

The only difference was the price they were offered: $3.99 for a couple of lucky shoppers. $4.59 or $4.69 for others. And a few saw a price of $4.79 — 20 percent more than some others, for the exact same product.

The shoppers were volunteers, participating in a study published on Tuesday and organized by the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive policy group, and Consumer Reports, a nonprofit consumer publication. In tests in four cities across the country, nearly 200 volunteers checked prices on 20 grocery items on Instacart.

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https://groundworkcollaborative.org/work/instacart/

Same Cart, Different Price: Instacart’s Price Experiments Cost Families at Checkout
December 9, 2025

Two shoppers walk into the exact same grocery store, at the exact same time, and pick up the exact same box of Cheerios. Then, they head to the cash register to check out. This sounds like the opening to one of those “three guys walk into a bar” jokes — but there is nothing funny about this punchline.

The first shopper is charged $4.99. She pays and leaves the store with her box of cereal. The second customer steps up to the register and is charged $6.12. He’s ticked and tells the cashier that he, too, should pay $4.99, just like the woman in front of him. His response is understandable. Customers expect to pay the exact same price, for the exact same item, and his experience violates our shared understanding of how pricing for essential products like groceries is supposed to work.

But increasingly, this scenario is no longer hypothetical, it’s real. In fact, the proliferation of new pricing practices and technologies has upended pricing transparency. Fair pricing is no longer a guarantee in the cereal aisle or anywhere else. Our research suggests that companies like Instacart — the focus of this study — are developing, acquiring, and perfecting technology to experiment with pricing, at scale.

These new strategies are pervasive in the growing online grocery sector, with $10 billion in sales in a single month in 2025 and more than 60% of U.S. households reporting they have purchased groceries online.1 At a time when food price inflation outpaces overall inflation, and Americans report that the price of groceries is their number one cost concern, pricing experiments used by companies like Instacart are making the situation worse.

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[snowybirdie]

1. I figured this out

awhile back. Delivery site prices are usually higher than,personally going into the store. Don't have a clue who gets the difference.

[OldBaldy1701E]

2. You mean US corporations are...GASP... price gouging? And, ripping people off??

Well, I need my waiting couch and my pearls!

(Without proper, strict, and tough regulations, these rich corporations are going to bleed us dry, and then sell our corpses to the highest bidder. They are already buying up every competitor that they can to make sure that only they are around.They need to be reigned in. Of course, that is all but impossible with the fiscal delusions we currently operate under.)

[Conjuay]

3. my neighbor figured out a while ago -

he shops walmarts in poorer zip codes cross the country. Claims he gets better prices.