Montreal, November 19, 2020 – The COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures have prompted merchants to reorganize their business and accelerated the adoption of new technologies, such as electronic labels.

Recognizing this new normal, JRTech Solutions, PRICER’s leading supplier of electronic labels in North America, conducted an online survey to assess the experience of more than 1,000 retailers who already use of electronic shelf labels as well as those who don’t during the first wave of COVID-19.

The study confirms that all retailers faced operational challenges during the first wave: understaffing, rising consumer demand, out-of-stock shelves, and rising online orders.

In fact, to deal with these problems, the survey reveals that 92% of respondents with automated pricing systems say that electronic labels were more than essential to their operations. The same goes for respondents who do not use electronic labels. More than two-thirds or 67% of them believe that electronic labels could have been beneficial for them in dealing with these problems.

Beyond showing the usefulness of electronic labels in operations during the first pandemic wave, this survey also gives us an overview of the retailer sentiment in the face of the current second wave, whether or not they are equipped with electronic labels.

Three-quarters or 75% of respondents currently using electronic labels said they felt better prepared for the problems associated with a second wave of COVID-19 because they already had PRICER electronic price tags in place. Additionally, 67% of retailers who don’t already have electronic labels felt they would feel more comfortable tackling the issues of the second pandemic wave, if they already had PRICER electronic labels in their store.

“What is very interesting is that while our study reveals that retailers who already use electronic shelf labels felt they were an essential technology in dealing with the pandemic, retailers who don’t already use Pricer electronic labels could more easily imagine the benefit it would provide to them during a subsequent wave of COVID-19.”, says Lunedrée Bénobon, Marketing Manager of JRTech Solutions.

Diego Mazzone, President and CEO of JRTech Solutions explains “COVID-19 has been a game-changer for retailers. It has highlighted what is working for them and what is not. Our study has demonstrated that electronic shelf labels have rapidly accelerated to the status of a must-have technology rather than a nice-to-have technology during this pandemic and for other unknown future challenges to the traditional retail model.”

In fact, PRICER electronic labels have benefits such as:

1. Restock empty shelves up to 50% faster than usual with SmartFLASH
2. Quickly process Click-N-Collect orders and save up to 10 seconds per collected item
3. Instantly locate an in-store product using a dynamic real-time geolocation application

To find out more about the benefits of automated pricing systems, download our white paper “Retailers’ Perceptions of Electronic Shelf Label Technology During COVID-19” via the link below.