News

Retail Top 100 2012, No. 90: Electronic shelf labels

May 13, 2012

Given the headaches and hours of labor it takes to keep prices accurate and up to date for a superstore's worth of product, electronic shelf labels would seem to be a no-brainer. Yet ESLs, while widely used in Europe and parts of the West Coast, have seen only limited, experimental use in other locales. ESLs connect to a storewide network, communicate with the retailer's POS system and download prices to labels at the store, or from a corporate location for numerous store locations simultaneously. ESLs can also display additional information via a touchscreen interface such as nutritional information, price-per-measure, or even recipes. Even though the cost of implementing ESLs has decreased over the years thanks to improvements in battery technology and economies of scale, there are still significant startup costs. The tipping point for ESLs will come if and when there are sufficient gains in flexible and responsive pricing to justify the cost difference over cheaper labels.

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