John Furner

Now, that episode dropped September 17th as Owens kicked off her publicity tour ahead of the book's publication.

About a week later, Walmart CEO John Furner posted a letter to customers without naming the book, explaining those digital shelf tags are a time-saver for staff and a guarantee of consistency more than anything, and Furner denied that Walmart uses purchase data to adjust or personalize prices.

His quote, "We price the product, not the person."

Lindsey Owens' book tour has continued on CNN, MS Now, The Today Show, Public Radio, and a host of print outlets, prompting Walmart's top corporate affairs executive, Dan Bartlett, to reiterate the company's denials this week, and he accused the author for mischaracterizing Walmart's practices.

That was our first Morrison story.

And then, then last week, Jordan Burke and I talked about John Furner's letter about pricing principles amongst all the talk of surveillance, surveil- so-called surveillance pricing.

Um- So look, we've given this kind of broader theme some good air in recent weeks.

So I didn't make it one of our main stories this week, but I think, I think, Chris, I think you're hoping to talk about it in much more detail on the Omnitalk Fast Five tomorrow.

Walmart Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation Greg Caphe said that customers have triggered 5 million flashes since the pilot began this summer and herein lies the real value of digital shelf labels.

The outside industry pitch has always been faster price changes and that is exactly what has made shoppers and lawmakers nervous, but that isn't where the value comes from and Walmart CEO John Furner even published an open letter recently promising Walmart will quote, "Price the product, not the person." end quote.

For my money, the real prize has never been price changes.

In fact, it's probably not even Shop to Light.

So total compensation for executives when factoring in total compensation above their base salary seems pretty high.

So in 2026, CEO John Furner made $27.3 million and other executives just weren't really that far behind him in terms of their comp either.

But, you know, let's at least get some context here and look at how these incentives are achieved before we pass too much judgment.

So the proposal that was approved in the latest proxy called for 82% of compensation to be performance-based.

We know we got him by the balls." Every day low prices, my ass.

CEO John Furner, he's the Walmart president and CEO, John Furner.

Uh, he says, "I've heard concerns about companies using that information and technology to charge you more." He says, "I want to tell you where we stand.

We price the product, not the person." He says, "Prices may fluctuate when the cost of goods or transportation changes," but stressed that Walmart will not use a customer's income, shopping history, urgency, or other personal information to set prices.

Yeah, always interesting to get a Fortune 500 CEO weighing in on your work.

Um, but look, Furner says one thing to Walmart consumers.

He says another thing to investors.

He says quite another thing to the patent office.