AI Pricing and Your Customers: Why Walmart Promised Not to Charge You Based on Who You Are

Episode notes

What this conversation covers

Same table. Same menu. Same chicken parm. Hers is twenty-two dollars. Yours is twenty-six, because the software knows you’re a regular and figures you’ll pay it. The restaurant is made up. The technology that could run it that way is not.

On September 25, 2026, Walmart CEO John Furner put oneline in a letter to customers: “We price the product, not the person.” Walmart says it won’t set prices based on who you are, your income, your shopping history or how badly you need something, and it holds its AI shopping assistant, Sparky, to the same promise. Kim and Hal dig into what that means for a small business, where one angry customer can talk to ten more at church, at school pickup and in the neighborhood Facebook group.

Hal argues the other side (hotels and airlines have alwayscharged more on busy days), and Kim draws the line between pricing everyone sees and pricing that’s built around you. Then a made-up dog groomer turns on a “dynamic pricing” setting, forgets about it, and learns the hard way thatcustomers don’t care what your software did. Your name is on the door.

The bigger idea: as AI starts making choices inside yourbusiness, you need a few house rules. What it can do on its own. What it can help with while a person decides. And what it never gets to decide. A rule that never says no is just a poster on the wall.

The three steps, so you don’t have to remember themwhile you drive:

1. Name it. One plain sentence about what you won’t dowith price.
2. Check it. Every tool that touches a price: booking, e-commerce, CRM, quoting, ads.
3. Say it. Put the promise where customers can see it,before they have a reason to doubt you.

Walmart’s letter:https://corporate.walmart.com/about/everyday-affordability/letter-from-our-ceo

Ready to Take Action

• Website and IMPACT:https://smallbusinessbigai.com/

• Kim Lewis Howard on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-lewis-howard/

• Hal Howard on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/halhoward/

• Insurance assessment, commercial or personallines: https://asklewishoward.com

Q: What is personalized pricing, and should a smallbusiness use it?

Personalized pricing means using what you know about aspecific customer, like their purchase history, their location or how urgently they seem to need something, to set the price that customer sees. AI tools now make it easy, sometimes as a setting inside booking or e-commerce software. The risk for a small business is trust. Your customers know each other, and the first time two of them compare prices and the numbers don’t match, the problem becomes your reputation, not your revenue. If you use any “smart” or “personalized” pricing feature, know exactly what it’s doing, and be able to explain it to a customer out loud.

Q: What is the difference between dynamic pricing andpersonalized pricing?

Dynamic pricing changes the price based on conditionseveryone shares, like a busy Saturday, peak season or a rush job. Anyone who shows up under the same conditions sees the same price. Personalized pricing changes the price based on who you are, so two people standing side by side canpay different amounts for the same thing at the same moment. Customers generally accept the first as the market. The second tends to feel like being watched, which is why it carries more risk for a business that depends on repeatcustomers and word of mouth.