In retailing stores, price tagging is considered as one of the most time-consuming and resource-intensive tasks. Being a retailer, you need to hire so many people to tag price options with products and services. However, high chances of human errors make the whole tagging process inaccurate and inefficient. To cope with this challenge, retailers are moving from manual tagging to Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs). SES (Store Electronic System) is an ideal example in this case, as it deployed millions of NFC tags in ESLs to achieve high customer satisfaction within apparel stores. Sephora, Jardiland, Euronics, Elkjop, Colruyt are examples of supply chain stores that implemented SES’s ESL solutions.
But what is ESL and how it is different from manual price tagging?
Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs)
ESL is an electronic description of products where every price tag of products is updated from the computing database. They use e-ink to display the final price of items in-store.
Advantages of ESLs
With ESLs, retailers can experience various features;
No Human Error
Deployment of ESLs across the store eliminates human errors and improves the overall accuracy. You need to type, edit or update the price of the product from the keyboard and press enter to send. It enables you to enlist accurate pricing instead of performing manual editing.
High Transparency
ESLs also helps you to maintain transparency as sometimes customers check the price of the product online while standing in-store, and if they found a difference between offline and online prices, they’ll leave the store immediately. But retailers can overcome this challenge through ESLs.
Manages Promotions and Audit Trails
ESLs give you complete control to manage promotions, audit trails and discount offers. By offering promotional prices on the shelves, you can capture high profits from each corner of the in-store corridors.
More Personalization
The e-ink price markings are not just electronic versions of price tags; they offer you dynamic ways to explore customer behaviour. These price tags permit you to offer instant promotion and sales prices for a specific customer. They are a key enabler of an omnichannel strategy. With ESLs, you can display stock levels, competitive prices and product descriptions. All these details maintain the interest of customers throughout the shopping.
No More Need for Staff
It is easy to update ESLs shelves wirelessly, so there’s no more need for human workers to update or edit price whenever price changes. The robust combination of RAIN RFID tags, NFC tags, and wireless environment allows the retailers to update price tags instantly without any human involvement.
All these benefits make the ESLs different and valuable from manual price tagging. Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) is also a similar approach in which RFID tags are used at the terminal gates of supply chain stores to deter theft. RFID tags provide a unique ID for every product, helping the retailers to identify, update, replace any stolen or taken items in inventory stores.
