What if the price you pay at the store depends on how much a company thinks you’re willing to spend?

We’ve already seen the controversy surrounding AI-powered personalized pricing in the airline industry. Now, Walmart is making headlines over allegations involving surveillance pricing patents that could potentially use customer data to influence what people pay.

In this episode of Leading Change in the Wild, I unpack the controversy surrounding Walmart’s patents, the growing use of AI in retail pricing, and the bigger questions this raises about consumer privacy, corporate responsibility, and trust.

Here’s what I unpack:

• The difference between dynamic pricing, personalized pricing, and surveillance pricing
• What the Groundwork Collaborative report alleges about Walmart’s technology patents
• How retailers could potentially use shopping behavior, biometric data, and other personal information to influence prices
• Walmart’s response and why holding a patent doesn’t necessarily mean using the technology
• Why the FTC is paying attention to personalized and surveillance pricing
• How AI-powered pricing could change the relationship between businesses and consumers
• Why these practices are contributing to growing distrust of corporations and AI
• What leaders should consider before implementing technology that benefits the business at the customer’s expense
• What concerns me most isn’t necessarily the technology itself.

It’s what companies are choosing to do with it.

There’s a difference between using AI to create better products, improve customer experiences, and deliver more value, and using it to figure out the maximum amount someone might be willing to pay.

And when companies prioritize extracting more value from customers instead of creating value for them, they risk losing something far more important than a sale.

Trust.

As I’ve said before, trust is still the currency the world operates on.

And as AI becomes more deeply integrated into our everyday lives, the decisions leaders make about how they use this technology will have a lasting impact on how consumers view their businesses.

👇 Let’s discuss:

• How do you feel about AI-powered personalized pricing?
• Should retailers be allowed to use personal data to determine what individual customers pay?
• Do you think Walmart will ever use these patents?
• At what point does personalization cross the line into exploitation?

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