> One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably.

There I was thinking the main purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price.

Product packaging is meant to grab your eye. Price tags are mostly functional (although some shops also use them to advertise offers).

Funny: I have vision issues being able to focus on product packaging so when I am searching for a particular, say, cheese in the cheese section I find it much easier to scan/read the shelf labels than the products themselves. I find the uniformity much easier to cope with.

I always thought Kohl's used LCD price tags.

I've seen those, they look more like old segmented LED displays. E-ink technology can be a lot clearer than that. Sounds to me like they wanted digital signs, but didn't want to pay for it.

Can't blame them to be honest, they probably get damaged a lot and they're competing price-wise with small pieces of printed paper.

I disagree. At my local Kohls, I can see the displays just fine from a reasonable distance. Up close their legibility is fine.

Are you sure? Looking at the price tags page I could swear I've seen those in Sweden before, and this image looks like it may be from a Swedish (or at least Scandinavian) store: https://tw.eink.com/uploads/images/application/showcase/ESL4...

I may very well be wrong, but I live a block away from a Coop, Systembolaget and a few other stores, I can do a quick sample test tomorrow. (I know they have tags similar looking to these but I couldn't swear they're e-ink. I always thought those tags were pretty cool but it drives me nuts when they aren't set and so you have to go around hunting for a price anyway. (Looking at you, Bauhaus!)

Real Canadian Superstore has them, at least in BC.

How much additional labor is it to stick a new label the few times the price changes or the few times the location of items are changed, relative to programming those new prices and those new locations in a computer?

And would that add up to needing to hire even a single new employee, considering that most retail stocking is done by regular employees during their down times (it’s not like stores are gonna reprice and rearrange products on the fly during busy times).

And it’s not just the cost of a single eink sticker because they will get damaged or break down more frequently.

About the same you need to stock the shelves

Ah, those use LCD price tags instead, right? Doesn't change that it's a massive market, though.