Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer Same Cart, Different Price: When the Invisible Hand Becomes an Algorithm (with Lindsay Owens)
Mar 10, 2026
Lindsay Owens, Executive Director of the Groundwork Collaborative and author of Gouged, explains how companies use AI and massive data to run pricing experiments on shoppers. She discusses the Instacart investigation, wide price variation across identical carts, and how algorithmic, surveillance-driven pricing challenges traditional market assumptions. Policy fixes and one-fair-price proposals are also explored.
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Instacart Pricing Experiments Hurt Family Budgets
- Instacart ran widespread pricing experiments that varied the same item's price by up to 23% across shoppers.
- Groundwork and Consumer Reports had volunteers screenshot 20-item baskets and estimated experiments could cost families up to $1,200/year.
Prices Are Now Engineered By AI Pricing Firms
- Modern pricing is engineered by AI pricing firms and consultants scraping web data and running willingness-to-pay tests.
- Firms calibrate markups above retailer costs to see how much they can charge before shoppers abandon carts.
Compare Prices Across Devices And Login States
- Do comparison shop across platforms, devices, and login states to spot price differences.
- Check in-store prices, online site prices, app prices, logged-in versus logged-out displays, and ask others to compare simultaneously.
