Digital Price Tags
Digital Price Tags, also known as Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL), are wireless displays. They run for years on a single battery due to the ultra-low power consumption of their ePaper technology. The primary use case is atomically and remotely updating the price.
Operational Efficiency
Digital price tags make pricing updates fast and accurate. They support synchronizing shelf pricing with the catalog used by e-commerce and point-of-sale solutions. Coordinating updates with digital marketing campaigns further increases the speed and agility when adapting pricing strategies.Flash Sales
Flash sales are promotions that run for a short time. Digital pricing tags help them by updating thousands an hour. It allows the store to run flash sales across many products simultaneously.Price Optimization
Price optimization adjusts costs to maximize profit. Sticker prices that are too high reduce sales volume, while excessive discounts cut profit margins. Digital shelf labels automate the collection of optimization data. The following chart shows how the unit price in blue changes with the profit margin in green.
Price Elasticity
Price Elasticity measures how sales volume changes with price. Sensitive products react strongly to discounting. Inelastic ones benefit more from promotion. A digital shelf label makes it easier to collect data on elasticity. The following chart shows an elastic product in blue and an inelastic in green.
Digital Shelf Label Technology
Digital shelf labels are not lit displays. Instead, they use electronic paper to hold screen images indefinitely without consuming power. That allows them to run for years on a small battery. The power consumption mainly comes from updating the display. So making many updates every day reduces the lifespan.Most labels come with an LED beside the display that can flash. The feature makes it easier to find one from a tightly packed group on the shelf. However, emitting light is a power drain, and it takes a few seconds for the device to respond.
Digital shelf labels have a limited color pallet. The most common are black and white, plus either red or yellow. There is no color depth or shading to a pixel. Gray scale simulation is possible by turning some pixels on and others off. But that degrades resolution. Adding logos requires a graphic designer to rework the source image to fit the display capabilities.
Digital shelf labels range from 1.5 inches (3.5 cm) to 12 inches (30cm). Most stores buy a minimal number of sizes because they come in pages containing hundreds to a few thousand. Reducing the range of sizes minimizes the time spent designing display layouts. Retailers typically focus on petite sizes because they are more affordable and fit onto standard shelving.
Premium labels protect devices from harsher environments. So they work in refrigerators and withstand moisture. However, they are not waterproof and not for outside environments.
