New Jersey is poised to become the latest battleground over electronic shelf labels (ESLs), approving legislation that would prohibit surveillance pricing in grocery stores while also placing a temporary freeze on the installation of new digital shelf labels. The measure, on its way to NJ governor Mikie Sherrill’s desk, arrives just as Walmart is rapidly expanding the technology across its U.S. store fleet. This development highlights a growing divide between retailers pursuing automation and lawmakers seeking to establish guardrails around emerging pricing technologies.
Supporters of the legislation argue that electronic shelf labels could eventually enable retailers to implement “surveillance pricing” by using consumer data to personalize prices. The bill would prohibit retailers from varying grocery prices based on customers’ personal information and temporarily restrict the deployment of new electronic shelf label systems in larger food stores.
Retailers, however, continue to emphasize that the technology’s primary purpose is operational efficiency rather than dynamic pricing. Electronic shelf labels allow stores to update prices almost instantly, improve price accuracy, reduce the labor required to replace thousands of paper tags each week and better synchronize shelf pricing with point-of-sale systems.
The timing is particularly notable because Walmart is in the midst of one of the grocery industry’s largest technology deployments. The retailer has expanded digital shelf labels to thousands of stores and plans to complete the rollout across its more than 4,600 U.S. locations by the end of 2026. Walmart has repeatedly stated that the technology is designed to improve store operations and customer service – not to facilitate surge pricing or individualized pricing. Company executives say prices are updated outside shopping hours and remain consistent throughout the business day.
The debate comes as investment in in-store technology continues to accelerate across the grocery industry. FMI – The Food Industry Association’s newly released The Food Retailing Industry Speaks 2026 report found that retailers continue to prioritize technology spending. The report identifies artificial intelligence, operational automation, and in-store technologies that improve the customer experience among the industry’s top investment priorities.
Electronic shelf labels have become an increasingly important part of that modernization strategy. Beyond automating price changes, retailers view the technology as a way to improve inventory accuracy, support omnichannel fulfillment, reduce paper waste and free store associates to spend more time assisting shoppers.
For lawmakers and consumer advocates, however, the rapid adoption of ESLs raises broader questions about how the technology could be used in the future. While retailers maintain that today’s systems simply replace paper price tags with digital displays, critics worry that advances in artificial intelligence and customer data analytics could eventually make personalized pricing technically feasible.
As adoption accelerates nationwide, the conversation is shifting beyond whether grocers should deploy digital shelf labels. Increasingly, the debate is becoming about how the technology should be regulated—and whether lawmakers can establish rules before widespread implementation becomes the industry standard.