Retail pricing has been in the news of late – especially in relation to making sure offers are always priced accurately. But making sure prices and promotions are correct is more demanding than it seems. Here we look at why that is and, what can be done about it.

A RESOURCE QUESTION

A year ago research firm IRI revealed that over half of all goods (54.6%) sold to UK shoppers in major retailers are on promotion. Just think about your average retail store and you realize that’s a huge number of items – so many in fact that a small army of staff would need to be pretty much constantly changing labels on the the shelf-edge. And when you consider 46.7% of retailers currently update their prices once a week, whereas 53.4% want to be making changes daily or in real time[1] – it’s not hard to join the dots and surmise that not every retailer has the resource on hand to manage the vast volume of label changes that are needed.

WHAT’S THE ANSWER?

The most obvious step is to ensure that price and promotions are accurate and consistent across all channels – in-store, online and mobile. This means being able to centrally manage changes in almost real time and receive confirmation that the changes have taken place. To do this, stores must become more digital. It’s crazy that in our digital age, and in such a price sensitive market, prices and offers are still based on paper labels that can only be manually changed and updated.

This is a huge time cost for retailers, and, it can be an impossible job to keep up with what labels need to be changed – and when. There has to be a better way. 

THE ANALOGUE PRICE ERA IS OVER

Now is the time for retailers to move to Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) to control and drive in-store pricing and promotions with speed, agility and consistency. I know what you’re thinking – we make labels so we would say that. But consider some of the benefits of deploying fully graphic three colour ESLs that our tier one retail customers are experiencing:

• Provide confidence to the customer (and staff) that the price on the shelf is current

• Change limitless numbers of labels, on any shelves, anywhere, in seconds

• Display product, price, promotion, stock levels, social reviews, currency details and much more

• 100% compliant audits: Each ESL features powerful two-way broadcast of price, product and promotional content to ensure 100% accuracy. Each individual ESL responds back to headquarters, confirming updates have been received and activated

• Highlight promotions with the brightest and most consistent colours available

• Apply dynamic promotional strategies and price-match competitors in minutes

• Free staff to serve customers and improve sales in store, rather than printing, cutting out and inserting paper into shelf edges

It’s time to price this way.

[1] RIS, Pricing Intelligence Goes to War, January 2014