We all know that when it comes to grocery stores, space is a premium. Especially with sellers like Kroger, every item in stock is placed thereafter carefully considering its sales potential compared to each competing piece of inventory, and optimized to maximize earnings. It’s why you often see children’s cereal brands on the lower shelves so that they’re at eye level with their target audience, or why there’s a big Coca Cola display set up just before major sporting events. Each move is planned and executed as part of a much larger numbers game for grocery chains.
But even with all of the market research and data-driven decision making, there’s one thing that this industry has lagged for many years: Integrating with the digital space – until now. Recently, we mentioned new technology innovations such as Marty the Robot and Amazon Go. As part of our ongoing efforts to highlight the latest and greatest IT advances, we’re here to talk about another innovative new option to add to any grocer’s infrastructure quiver. Earlier this year, local supermarket chains made a larger push to implement digital shelving.
Here’s how it could change the game:
Instant Pricing Adjustments
Whether you worked at a supermarket in 1919, or 2019, there hasn’t been much of a change in the way prices have been set. It usually involves a store representative walking around and manually switching out the numbers listed below each product. The process could take hours, and would often have to subsequently be adjusted again after a sale was ended.
With digital shelving, however, that all changes. Stores can now instantly adjust prices based on the latest sales and deals they’re aiming to push to their customers. With the power to implement new promotions in just seconds, it gives owners the flexibility to quickly test different strategies and adjust to trends on the fly. Better yet, is the fact that flash sales could become a very real marketing initiative in the coming years, promoting certain items for very short periods of time – boosting demand with a limited discount for only an hour or two.
New Advertising Opportunities
As we’ve seen with any digital display introduction, there will also be new opportunities for companies to advertise products and make money off of sponsored content. Think of the digital shelving as prime real estate for highly targeted in-store billboards.
Grocers will now have the ability to draw attention to products, which need to be sold soon, as well as sell marketing space to companies who would like to pay for more awareness surrounding their products. Imagine the possibilities. Potato chip companies like Doritos paying to have their bags highlighted just before the Super Bowl. Flashing lights steering patrons towards free samples. The opportunities on what owners and vendors could do with this new advertising space is endless. The beautiful part of digital shelving is that it is extremely agile, and can easily be repurposed for any number of new tasks and initiatives. It is a far cry from the ineffective posters and ads from yesteryear.
Our team specializes in putting together compelling IT Infrastructures, which improve your store’s bottom line. If your business is interested in taking its grocery technology initiatives to the next level, we encourage you to schedule a meeting with our team using the Calendly plug-in on the upper right corner of this page. We’ll reach out to discuss your unique business goals so that we can begin crafting a solution that best fits your needs. If you’d like to read more of our thoughts on trends for brick and mortar locations, check out our blog here.