The study shows that Instacart may charge some shoppers 20% more for the same product

A Recent study Consumer Reports (CR) claims that Instacart is conducting AI-led dynamic pricing experiments that, in some cases, significantly inflate the cost of some products.

CR and its research partner Groundwork Collaborative found that the delivery app was conducting these experiments at the locations of the platform’s retail partners, such as Kroger, Albertsons, Costco and Safeway. In some cases, consumers were paying up to 23% more than other shoppers for the exact same product, the report says.

The software involved in the experiments, Eversight, is a SaaS product Grocers provide The Retail Pricing Suite is designed to “unleash revenue growth” and leverage “pricing solutions that scale your pricing strategy and uncover the optimal prices your customers expect.” Instacart reveals on its Eversight page that some shoppers “may see slightly higher prices” than others.

However, as mentioned earlier, some of these price hikes appear to be a little higher than “a little higher.” A 23% price hike isn’t exactly chump change.

When reached for comment, Instacart referred TechCrunch to a previous filing Statement issued “Just as retailers have long tested pricing in physical stores to understand what resonates with customers, a small subset of our retail partners — 10 U.S. retail partners that have already chosen to implement markups — are using Instacart’s Eversight technology to conduct limited pricing testing online,” the company noted.

Dynamic pricing has become increasingly popular in recent years, and many major e-commerce sites have been accused of using it. last Latest report He claimed that because of the dynamic pricing used by Amazon, school districts across the United States are paying higher prices for basic school supplies. Amazon ever since Report called “Defective and misleading.”