A Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union investigation found that some grocery prices differed by as much as 23 percent per item from one Instacart customer to the next. In an inadvertently sent email, the company calls one pricing tactic “smart rounding.”
Rewards programs can make sense without this kind of fuckery. My local pizza place isn’t adjusting their prices, they still match the paper take out menus and coupons. But they have a rewards program because it incentivizes people to come back, and repeat business is worth the slight discount.