Online vs Physical Stores: Over the past few years, retail sector has been under pressure from mainstream adoption of digital shopping channels. Even though majority of shoppers prefer to see, touch and try items before purchase, cost advantage and end-end user rating of products/items, the customer inclination towards e-commerce sector has been increasing every day. This poses serious threat to the vendors operating in bricks and mortar retail stores, as shopper’s psyche is gradually shifting towards online platforms. With competition on the rise from digital sales channels, traditional retailers across the globe are increasingly focusing on adopting advanced digital technologies to diminish the lines between digital and physical retail in terms of customer engagement and dynamic pricing.

Dynamic Retail Pricing: To change the price of products in real-time, retailers must deploy dynamic price strategy based of competitor activity, pricing trend of a product in the market. To achieve this, physical retailers must update the price tag of products on a regular basis. However, manually updating the price tags in stores that sell tens of thousands of distinct products that are merchandised manually is very challenging and involves diverse range of workforce and associated cost.

To address these challenges, technology companies are offering automated pricing solutions based on e-paper and IoT technology. Electronic Self Labels is an automatic pricing solution that uses e-paper display connected to central server through access points, which can update thousands of labels at a given point in time simultaneously. Electronic pricing label is an automated system where the price of the product/commodity is displayed and updated electronically, which enable store operators to engage in real-time dynamic pricing as well as offer omnichannel experience to customers. The electronic labels are basically an electronic ink display capable of reflecting text and images, and the key advantage of e-paper display is the superior power efficiency and consumes power only when updating the displayed content.

Conclusion: The development of internet of things (IoT) based retail pricing solution is anticipated to transform the current operating models of traditional retail stores. Major retail chains have started to deploy electronic self-labels in their stores, and the future demand for electric self-label is expected to increase significantly, as the retail sector is undergoing a disruptive shift towards adopting digital technologies. Compared to other regions, the demand for electronic self-label in Europe is significantly high driven by factors such stringent retail regulations and presence of major vendors in the region

- Delsingh
Research Analyst(Electronics & Semiconductors)
Infoholic Research