Study shows that Instacart was charging different amounts for the same items

"A collaborative report from Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union has uncovered pricing experiments within the Instacart app that yielded higher or lower prices for different users on the exact same items from the same store location. The organizations partnered to enroll 437 shoppers in an experiment across four cities, where each shopper added the same items to their carts within Instacart from the exact same store."

"Engadget reached out to Instacart and received the following response. It reads in part: "Just as retailers have long tested prices in their physical stores to better understand consumer preferences, a subset of only 10 retail partners - ones that already apply markups - do the same online via Instacart. These limited, short-term, and randomized tests help retail partners learn what matters most to consumers and how to keep essential items affordable." An Instacart spokesperson added that this is not dynamic pricing (insofar as it is not based on supply and demand), that no personal demographic data is used in the process and that these experiments are random."

Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union enrolled 437 shoppers across four cities to test Instacart pricing by having each shopper add identical items from the same store to their carts. Almost 75 percent of grocery items appeared at multiple price points, with up to five different prices for the same item. The average gap between highest and lowest prices was 13 percent and the largest gap observed was 23 percent. Most tests occurred at Safeway and Target stores. Instacart said a small subset of ten retail partners ran short-term randomized pricing tests, that no personal demographic data is used, and that pricing on Target has since been discontinued.

Read at Engadget