theoreticalmal parent
I bet most companies wouldn’t want to share that information, as they would end up directly competing for every item with every other store in the radius. Most stores have cost leaders on some items and then make up for that lost revenue with higher margins on others. With the new system, every store would have their high margin items next to the same item, but sold as a cost leader, at other stores
And the same stores will then complain that Amazon is taking their business. Also, loss leaders don't make sense unless that price is widely known to the point where it draws people into your store.
I agree with you, and this backwards mentality is handing even more business over from smaller local shops to the big online stores!
People are going to discover your prices anyway. Hiding them just means it will take longer. I remember my grandpa used to go to five different grocery stores weekly, just to do grocery shopping, because he knew store A had the cheapest eggs, store B had the cheapest vegetables, store C had the cheapest milk, and so on.