How did you think about doing this and then structuring the investigation the way that you did?

Yeah.

So we've been doing pricing investigations for about 18 months, and all of them have this cross-civic sort of testing married with investigative journalism, married with policy components to it.

CR is a pretty unique organization in that sense.

It's 90 years old and has all these different arms to it.

And we started with an investigation into Kroger, the grocery chain.

And we were looking at their loyalty program, which is free.

I would love to hear about why, why people thought it was unfair.

Sure.

Yeah, they connect with each other.

So it's a good segue.

So with Instacart, we want to know more about how they use tech to set prices on the platform.

And if you haven't used Instacart, basically it's a third party grocery delivery service that contracts with many of the largest grocery chains in the US and elsewhere to operates overseas.

And basically uses independent contractors to pick up those groceries and deliver them to your home or office.

And what we were seeing were the prices on the Instacart platform didn't match what grocery shoppers were seeing on either in the grocery aisle themselves in person or on the e-commerce or app platforms of that particular grocery store.

It has nothing to do with who you are or where you're going etc and i don't know that consumer reports is alleging that but it seemed like there were some articles there were some references in the article about other places had how people going to was in chicago a nicer hotel uh ended up paying a higher rate than those who didn't uh i have a i was talking to a colleague about this before as sort of a conspiracy theory just that if i'm using you know i have an uber account but i also have a corporate uber account so you know based on for anybody in the company's traveling and i have to think that If I do a little test, maybe the corporate one would pay a little more all the time because you're just like, if I'm coming back from the airport and I'm using my corporate Uber account, do I care that it's 10 bucks more? Would I balk at that? I feel like people are a little bit more relaxed on those things.

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capture many different multiple moments in time to sort of understand the constellation of data out there for Rideshare.

And then we take all that in, we get all the screenshots back, we analyze that both.

We have an automated system and then a human in the loop system.

We run a bunch of different regressions and statistical sort of analyses on all of that data.

And then we did the in-person part.

Because you can look at algorithmic pricing in a vacuum and virtually, but it's really important to see how this plays out in real life, right? If you're ordering trips and taking them with drivers.

So what did the good folks at Uber and Lyft say about your test? Did they say it's a bunch of bullshit or what they

Is it just Instacart? Are other companies doing this to us?

Other retailers are doing it, yeah.

(music) And, you know, the- the more technologically savvy they are, the more likely they are to be using this at a scale that, um, really affects, you know, more Americans.

When we looked at a- a grocery retailer called Kroger, which is actually the second or third largest, uh, retailer by- by most metrics.

Uh, they own a bunch of different banners, um, King Soopers and Fred Meyer and QFC and- and all these, you know, grocery chains around the country.

We found that they actually use a lot of personal and- and demographic data on their customers and they drive a lot of people through their free loyalty program.

And then with that data, they tailor promotions and discounts to particular people and they use that personal data, those- those demographics to, uh, dictate who gets what promotion or discount.

Huh.