The immense popularity of online shopping and e-commerce has significantly challenged offline retail stores to quickly adapt to the evolved shopping benchmarks in a pandemic-hit world. Consequently, brick-and-mortar retail stores are revitalizing themselves with sophisticated technologies and adopting tools such as digital price tags, also known as electronic shelf labels (ESLs).
Digital price tags are not new; over 79% of US retailers have already embraced ESLs, including giant retail chains like Walmart and Sephora. (Source) But recently, ESLs have found major acceptance among more retailers aiming for a seamless omnichannel convergence. As evolved market dynamics trigger retail stores to enrich their customer experience, the demand for digital price tags keeps soaring. The market for ESLs is expected to touch $2.4 billion by 2027.
Digital price tags come with multifaceted uses. It addresses not only consumer preferences but also benefits you, the retailer, in many ways.
Ensure consistent dynamic pricing
With the disruptive use of the Internet for shopping, retailers must stay vigilant about price fluctuation on online channels. But the actual value lies in utilizing this intelligence to display altered prices in real-time and maintain uniformity in your store.
Remember, while your consumers do enjoy the in-store shopping experience, priced at par with online stores will trigger their purchase decisions. After all, for nearly 68% of consumers, consistent pricing online and offline is the primary reason for shopping in-store. With digital price tags, you can instantly display updated prices without any delays or lags.
Optimize labor expenses
As per Kroger, the USA’s largest superstore by revenue, updating price tags manually in a supermarket can easily take over two weeks. But ESLs can complete the task in seconds! This ability of digital price tags eliminates your need to allocate staff for manually tagging items with new prices. According to Aperion, this can optimize your labor expenses by almost 90%. And you can leverage your human workforce to engage with in-store shoppers or focus on more critical store operations.
Order fulfilment and inventory management
Digital price tags help you streamline order fulfilment even in times of unprecedented surges in online orders and curbside pickups. In case the demand for some items escalates suddenly, you can put buy limits on shelves using ESLs. This will facilitate effective inventory management, allowing you greater control over order completion, and ensure the availability of those items for other customers.
As a retailer, you must be looking to create the best possible omnichannel experience for your consumers. And using digital price tags is one of the easiest ways to achieve this.
