Smart Pricing Drives Sales Growth—and Customer Trust

Today, innovative retailers are recapturing this lost revenue with AI-enabled store intelligence and analytics. In a recent survey of 150 retail executives, half said they’re currently using store intelligence to improve pricing accuracy. Even among those that haven’t yet invested in these solutions, 40% say they want to implement them soon.

A store intelligence solution can establish a comprehensive, automated process to surface actionable insights for store teams, helping them keep price tags continuously (and effortlessly) updated. From winning customer loyalty to building supplier trust, executing the right prices and promotions plays a critical role in a successful retail strategy.

Moving beyond paper labels

Stores often use paper labels, which are expensive to maintain. They’re small, hard to read, and easily damaged, making it difficult to identify errors. Every time an item’s price is changed, associates have to log onto a computer, type out the new pricing data, and print the tags out one by one. Retailers end up losing a lot of time and resources in the process.

Some retailers have pivoted to using electronic shelf labels (ESLs) to streamline pricing. ESLs, paired with a central database, can be automatically updated without having to print and inspect paper labels every day. Price inaccuracies can range anywhere from 10 to 15% in stores using paper labels; and with ESLs on shelves, that number goes down to 1%. Still, ESLs aren’t a perfect solution: sometimes updates don’t occur due to bandwidth issues, and tags can be misplaced.

The most operationally efficient stores deploy a comprehensive store intelligence platform to ensure their ESLs run smoothly. Armed with computer vision, Simbe’s autonomous inventory robot, Tally, can roam the aisles to monitor for discrepancies between ESLs and the pricing information in their centralized database. When ESL tags turn off unexpectedly, a store intelligence platform can alert teams and ensure prompt action.

Saving store teams valuable time

Store associates conduct audits by physically inspecting tags on shelves and comparing them to the prices listed in their database. Because this process is so tedious, it’s nearly impossible for employees to examine every item in the store in a single round.

Since they don’t have enough time to complete a full pricing check, associates often resort to “spot checks” by randomly selecting products for inspection. But despite these frequent audits, errors still slip through the cracks. Today, manual audits only identify 1 in 10 pricing and promotion errors across a store.

But by working with technologies like RFID tags, ESLs, and computer vision cameras, a store intelligence platform can cross-reference multiple data sources throughout the store and scan large shopping areas in seconds. This approach allows retailers to conduct a more comprehensive audit without the need for time-consuming manual checks.

Reclaiming revenue across the store

ESLs are an important step toward accurate pricing and away from manual audits. By combining them with the in-depth analytics and automation capabilities of store intelligence solutions, retail leaders can see smarter operations and long-term savings. Businesses should follow three strategic steps to drastically reduce pricing and promotion errors.

Strengthening customer and supplier relationships

Inconsistencies between a product’s price at checkout and what’s displayed on its tag can often delay transactions and frustrate customers. With store intelligence solutions like Simbe’s, these errors can become a thing of the past.

Retailers want to deliver a seamless shopping experience to their customers, ensuring accurate pricing every time they shop. Tally’s best-in-class computer vision can help stores by capturing even the finest print on product labels and continuously checking for anomalies throughout the day.

Supplier partners also need to know whether their products are being sold at the right prices. Without any meaningful insight, suppliers typically have to make significant investments in third-party services (or send their own representatives) to check whether their items are being displayed correctly. A store intelligence solution can serve as the single source of truth for all pricing information. Supplier partners can access updated shelf captures from Tally’s daily traversals to ensure the store is running the most up-to-date prices and promotions throughout the store. This visibility fosters trust, as supplier partners know their products will be displayed according to their agreed-upon terms.

Fun fact: Tally can see 150% farther and clearer than competitive technology