Influenced by Industry 4.0, retail is going through its own paradigm shift. Faced by the changing customer profiles and ever-growing online competition, retailers are seeking ways to leverage advanced technologies, such as big data, internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing, to improve their performance and accelerate their growth.
Using IoT devices and retail analytics platforms, retailers can optimize their operations, take appropriate measures, and prevent revenue losses. On the one hand, retail analytics platforms allow retailers to provide customers with what they precisely need – relevant products with an informed and responsive customer service, and on the other hand, they greatly improve retailers’ customer acquisition efforts by giving data-driven deep insights on purchase patterns, frequency of interaction and purchase and nuances of the purchasing journey, thus allowing to accurately predict demand and act accordingly with price changes.
It is not easy to be a retailer these days. Burdened by decreasing margins as a result of supplier’s demands to pass on raw-material cost inflation, higher investments to match the new (online) competition, and ever-rising labor costs, together with customer expecting personalized engagement and deals, retailers need to adapt to address these margain strains and customer expectations.
The days when retailers could rely on traditional pricing methods are long gone. Nowadays, online price comparision engines allow instant display of competitors’ prices, track prices over time and estimate changes. Moreover, influenced by their online shopping experience, customers want personalized engagement and deals that reflect their specific needs.
Electronic shelf labels offer retailers a chance to adopt dynamic price strategies throughout their stores from a single point. In addition, such labels allow targeted communication, displaying of product reviews and recommendation and take away the burden of manually printing and changing labels, thus allowing store personnel to better service the customers.
