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Paper short abstract:

Based on the etymology of term “digital” (from digitus, finger or toe), we show that the display of prices in retail settings rests on a mundane digitization process (retailers’ handwriting practices, consumers’ “sticky fingers”, “trigger fingers” of price guns, “digits” of electronic devices).

Paper long abstract:

Our focus is on the long-term process of price tag digitization, ranging from manually written prices to contemporary electronic shelf labels. Based on the etymology of term "digital" (from digitus, finger or toe), we intend to show that the display of prices in retail settings surprisingly rests on a digitization process right from the beginning. We show that price setting was first a practice involving the coding of prices by hand so that only the retailer could read them and then adjust prices to individual customers. Later, price setting focused on hand writing techniques used to produce displays with standardized fonts and show cards. The advent of self-service played a dramatic role in this shift by forcing the retailers to disclose prices, but also by raising new problems and threats, like the risk of "sticky fingers" that could steal goods or displace the price tags on the shelves. In the fifties, the invention of price "guns" introduced a new game of "trigger fingers". It also opened new risks of "sticky fingers" that could move price stickers from one good to another. These risks were addressed by a new movement of price digitization, in the modern sense this time, using barcodes and electronic shelf labels, and making use of trigger fingers to activate handheld or checkout scanners. Retracing these mundane evolutions of price display illuminates the role of the concrete fingers of the invisible hand that animates the market, so to say.