The future of retailing

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Digital price tags The future of retailing?
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• Digital price tags might be popping up in shops
  all over the country, but experts say they're not
  likely to become a norm any time soon.
• Instantaneous price tagging - prices displayed on
  tiny screens, rather than paper labels - is
  designed to improve the accuracy of pricing and
  productivity.
• Supermarket giant Foodstuffs first introduced a
  digital price tag system almost 10 years ago with
  New World Hastings the first store to use the
  technology. Today, 45 of its 138 New World stores
  use electronic pricing.
• Combined with other supermarket brands Pak'nSave
  and Four Square stores, 70 Foodstuffs stores use
  the technology.

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• New Zealand's largest retailer The Warehouse last
  month rolled out digital price tags to its Albany
  store, part of its 'concept store' which will
  test the market. It estimates instantaneous price
  changes will save staff between 10 and 20 hours
  each week.
• Digital price tags are expensive, perhaps one of
  the reasons uptake in the technology has been
  slow to take hold.
• Gavin Snowsill, owner and director of New Zealand
  Electronic Shelf Labelling, says his company
  installed its first digital pricing system around
  13 years ago

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• The cost to introduce the technology to a single
  store is between 200,000 and 300,000.
• A single price tag costs between 6 and 100, and
  a store can have up to 20,000.
• Supermarkets have taken the lead in using the
  tech, along with retailers such as pharmacies,
  Snowsill says, and his company installs systems
  to one store each week.

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• Technological advances have allowed for coloured
  screens and replaceable batteries in digital
  price tags, a step up from older calculator-type
  screens.
• The screens of new digital price tags use the
  same technology as Kindle e-readers.
• Snowsill says New Zealand is ahead of Australia
  in the adoption of digital price tagging, with
  around 1 per cent of retail using it there
  compared to 30 per cent here.
• Retail markets in France and Norway are almost
  completely electronic based.
• Hardware store Mitre 10, in New Zealand, has
  begun experimenting with digital price tags,
  along with supermarket chain Countdown and other
  The Warehouse Group retailers such as Warehouse
  Stationery and Noel Leeming.

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• Mitre 10 Mega introduced a part-digital pricing
  system to its Porirua store. But that's the only
  store to have done so.
• "Digital price tag technology is still relatively
  new and can be costly to implement," says Jules
  Lloyd-Jones, general marketing manager at Mitre
  10 New Zealand.
• "Digital tagging means price changes can be done
  seamlessly and in an instant, allowing our team
  to move faster to align with online price
  changes, saving both paper and time, and
  significantly reducing the margin for error."
• The company, which operates on a co-operative
  ownership model, has no plans to rollout the
  technology to the rest of its stores, Lloyd-Jones
  says.
• "As improvements are made to the screen
  technology and functionality, it will become more
  attractive."
• Ben Goodale, managing director of marketing firm
  justONE, says digital price tags were not common
  in New Zealand, and often used to drive down
  business costs.
• "I'm not too sure if they are really about the
  customer benefit as much as the organisational
  benefit," Goodale says.

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• "The consumer benefit is they should be seeing
  costs taken out of operations which can be used
  in keeping prices down.
• "Whether they actually catch on with all
  retailers is the big question ... they may never
  catch on with all main retailers.
• Snowsill believes digital price tagging will
  become mainstream in New Zealand, at least in
  certain industries.
• "In New Zealand at the moment, we are doubling
  the amount of stores implementing them year on
  year.
• "We've seen it growing but it's not just about
  digital price tags, it's about smart retail."
• A spokeswoman for Foodstuffs says its supermarket
  store owners are given the option to adopt the
  pricing technology.

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• "Store teams love electronic tickets as they are
  so easily updated saving on labour, reducing
  error rates and saving on printing and paper
  waste. They give us the opportunity to respond to
  pricing changes in real time, enabling us to pass
  on discounts or special deals at a moment's
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