Once upon a time, retail shelf pricing relied upon error-prone paper price tags requiring manual processes that sometimes had to be performed several times in a typical day. The advent of electronic shelf labels, or ESLs — small, battery-powered e-paper displays using wireless technology to communicate with a central hub — offered retailers the ability to automate pricing, establish more efficient in-store operations and (always a primary goal in retail) increase shopper satisfaction.
Electronic shelf labels, or ESLs, are part of an effort to reimagine the retail experience. A new wireless standard may help to removes barriers to ESL global adoption. Source: Qualcomm Technologies Inc.Until now, however, those ESL systems relied upon proprietary protocols for wireless communication, presenting a potential barrier to global adoption. Earlier this month, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the release of a new wireless standard reported to be scalable, ultra-low power and highly secure. The new standard offers benefits on both sides of the innovation coin: For retailers, it means the freedom to source components from multiple vendors and build an interoperable ESL ecosystem; for developers, it means the opportunity to reallocate engineering efforts to the development of value-added features and capabilities — not to mention the decrease in overall product costs that comes with increased supplier diversity. And for both, it means another step toward reimagining the physical shopping experience by fusing it with the convenience of digital shopping.
The efforts of the Bluetooth SIG working group were led by Qualcomm Technologies and SES-imagotag, a smart digital label and IoT retail solutions provider. SES-imagotag developed the VUSION Retail IOT platform as a way to help retailers transform their physical stores into what the company calls “high value digital assets” — more automated, data-driven, and connected in real-time to suppliers and consumers.
“The new ESL wireless standard that was spearheaded by Qualcomm Technologies and SES-imagotag will lead to more networked shelves and stores. Through the deployment of in-store IoT, retailers worldwide will benefit from more efficient operations, as well as enhanced customer experiences,” said Andreas Rössl, chief technology officer, SES-imagotag.
For Qualcomm, the effort is part of what it calls a comprehensive suite of connected products utilizing IoT to help keep retailers informed and agile across their operations — another way to tie the online to the offline. “As the retail landscape evolves, IoT technology collaborations with industry leaders are crucial to delivering the transformation of physical store environments and customer experiences,” said Roberto Di Pietro, vice president, business development, Qualcomm Europe Inc.
Key ESL system benefits, according to the Bluetooth SIG, include an 80% reduction in time spent on pricing updates and a 2% to 5% increase in sales. The Bluetooth SIG estimates that 2.4 billion ESL devices will be installed by 2027.
