touch screen monitors in brick and mortaar storess pricelist

However, this position of dominance has been shaken up by the rising power of connected buying, which has given rise to unified journeys integrating stores and digital channels, all ultimately aimed at a single purpose: serving customer needs. Customers are increasingly benefiting from these developments and contributing to the unification of “on” and “off” channels, the boundaries between which are becoming ever more porous.

Stores are obviously places where people buy things (this is their primary vocation at any rate), but they can be much more. With the integration of digital in customer journeys, more and more stores are being designed to be places where people have experiences. They are transforming the way we buy and appealing to our senses, to create experiences that cannot be offered through a smartphone screen or web interface alone.

With this in mind, an initial strategy is to integrate digital solutions that meet marketing aims related to customers’ emotions, well-being and reassurance. Customers are drawn into a seamless journey that immerses them in a brand experience, with no immediate transactional or conversion aims. QR codes on products to see customer reviews and detailed descriptions, smart mirrors in changing rooms, and interactive terminals to access product catalogs or place an order in-store when a product is out of stock, are all examples of solutions used to enhance the presentation of physical products and give them a new dimension.

A second strategy is to use technology to engage customers with the brand, during both the acquisition and loyalty-building stages. Assistance provided by sales staff trained to help with product personalization, using tablet-type interfaces, is a common example of this. By adopting these kinds of approaches, retailers can access tools to collect key information about existing and potential customers and, as a result, better meet their expectations during interactions with the brand, via store staff or customer service teams. Built around these unified data approaches, and based on data gathered through customers’ online journeys and physical experiences, this strategy opens up interesting prospects for retailers, which can refine and personalize their advice.

To stay relevant in today’s competitive brick and mortar environment and compete against digital sales, it’s crucial to create a positive in-store experience that incentivizes customers to keep coming back. Thus, the need for point of sale touch screen monitors in retail to inform, entertain, educate, and influence is more crucial than ever to cultivate customer loyalty and create a positive and memorable in-store experience.

Digital signage can serve a multitude of purposes in retail environments. Overhead large displays can be used to inform or direct consumers, whereas point of sale touch screen monitor are proven to increase sales and make the in-store experience superior to shopping online. Retail touch screen monitors can also be utilized to customize experiences towards a customer’s unique and specialized needs, creating a personalized experience that makes their shopping easier and more efficient.

We’ve worked with a multitude of clients to achieve their goals while improving and enhancing their brick and mortar experiences for their customers. Whether it’s a consumer-facing display to verify purchases, pricing, or signature capture or a POP display to educate customers within the aisle end cap, or specialty selection, we have the retail touch screens and expertise to provide the right POStouch screen monitor system for any retail need.

In the past, life was simple. Retailers connected with their customers through their stores, through their salespeople, through the brands and packages they sold, and through direct mail and advertising in the mass media. But today, life is more complex. There are dozens of new ways to attract and engage customers—and none are more tempting than those fueled by new technologies. Indeed, even if one omits the obvious—the Web—retailers are still surrounded by technical innovations that promise to redefine the way they and manufacturers interact with customers. Consider, just as a sampling: touch screen kiosks, electronic shelf labels and signs, handheld shopping assistants, smart cards, self-scanning systems, virtual reality displays, and intelligent agents.

So if we ask the question, Will technology change the way we interface with customers in the future? the answer has got to be yes. But if we ask a slightly different question, Will all of these technologies be successful? the answer is definitely no. Some of these technologies will succeed, but many will be disappointing failures. And that’s where the hard work comes in for senior managers in retailing today: Which technologies to embrace? Which to ignore? Which to spend precious resources on? When to pull the plug if success isn’t measurable and immediate?

“Which technologies to embrace? Which to ignore? Which to spend precious resources on? When to pull the plug if success isn’t measurable and immediate?”

To begin to answer these questions, it’s useful to consider past successes and failures. Take the shopping cart, for example. Now you might say the shopping cart is not a retail technology. But when Sylvan Goldman introduced it in 1936, it really was revolutionary. Before that time, people did their grocery shopping only with hand-baskets and were limited to purchasing what they could carry. When the shopping cart became available, people were able to buy more at one time, to stock up and visit the store less frequently.

Another success story is the universal-product-code scanner. Introduced only about 20 years ago, it has transformed the buying process in many retail stores. The UPC scanner has made checkout more convenient, improved checking accuracy, and provided us with a rich source of market research data.

On the other side of the coin, consider videotex, an early home computer system with a keyboard and telephone modem that used the consumer’s existing television as its monitor. Videotex was intended to be an electronic gateway to an array of information and interactive activities, including news, home shopping, advertisements, telephone directories, and banking. One such system, Viewtron, was jointly developed by Knight-Ridder and AT&T and launched in 1983. But after three years on the market, the system attracted only 15,000 customers, and Knight-Ridder pulled the plug on its $50 million investment.

Then there was interactive television. I recall a cover story on this subject in a July 1993 issue of Business Week whose headline proclaimed “Retailing Will Never Be the Same.” Time Warner received a lot of publicity when it introduced its interactive system, the Full Service Network, in Orlando, Florida, the following year. The company also made headlines when it shut down the service in 1997, after only 30 months, 4,000 customers, and an estimated cost of $100 million.

Some in-store technologies have also failed to meet expectations. Do you remember Ted Turner’s Checkout Channel? It was a network of five-inch color monitors positioned by the checkout counters in grocery stores. It ran a continuous loop of CNN programming and advertisements. Customers didn’t like it and neither did the checkers. After a year in business, the Checkout Channel was available in only 840 stores. Turner Broadcasting discontinued the service in 1993 with a $16 million charge to earnings.

And let’s not forget VideOcart. This was a wireless system of LCD screens and computers mounted on the handlebars of shopping carts. The screens could show a map of the aisles, highlight specials, and track how customers moved through the store. VideOcart was launched in 1989 by Information Resources and was later spun off as a separate company. The spin-off filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1993 after installing systems in just 220 stores.

Why have so many innovations failed? From the retailer’s perspective, many technologies are too expensive and offer too few tangible benefits. For example, to install the VideOcart system cost between $100,000 and $150,000 per store, and it took up valuable display space at the point of purchase. But evidence that it increased product sales was limited. Interactive television cost approximately $1,000 to install in each home, but it generated incremental revenues of just a few dollars per week from video-on-demand movies.

Hardware and software systems frequently require new expertise to implement, they’re often incompatible with existing systems, and they quickly become obsolete. Retailers also worry that new technologies might threaten their existing businesses. For example, many conventional retailers have hesitated to embrace electronic commerce because they fear that when consumers shop on-line, they’ll make fewer impulse purchases and become more price sensitive.

From the consumer’s point of view, many technologies make shopping harder rather than easier. As one shopper wrote to a columnist at the Houston Chronicle in June 1993:

“Dear Martin: I would like to tell you why the Checkout Channel did not work… It must have been conceived by executives who didn’t shop week in and week out… Most shoppers waiting in the checkout lines are tired, overworked parents whose minds are busy thinking of other things: how much their purchases will add up to, how they will keep track of the register display to watch for errors, and how much money they will have left when the groceries are paid for.”

Customers often see little or no value in new technologies. Why should they learn to use a self-checkout system if checkers are willing to do the work for them? Why would they use a product locator kiosk when they can ask a salesperson? Consumers also worry that technology is becoming (or has already become) too intrusive. They have concerns about the privacy of their personal information and the security of their financial transactions.

To avoid costly failures, retailers need to be better prepared for the next generation of technologies that interact with customers. Here are a few lessons gleaned from recent research conducted at Indiana University’s Customer Interface Laboratory and other academic and commercial institutions:

If consumers don’t see how technology is going to help them, they often assume it’s going to be used against them. When UPC scanners were first introduced, people reacted negatively because they believed that merchandise would no longer carry individual price tags and that shoppers might be overcharged at the register. More recently, customers have expressed concern that electronic shelf labels could be used to raise prices between the time shoppers pick up a product and the time they reach the checkout counter.

Similarly, IBM developed a video camera that could recognize a retailer’s best customers as they walked into the store so that salespeople could offer outstanding personalized service. Unfortunately, shoppers felt it was an invasion of privacy. The technology is now used to recognize vegetables at the point of sale, improving the speed and accuracy of the checkout. If the benefit is not immediately apparent, make it obvious through advertising and promotional materials.

Most computer technology is pretty complex. Take Internet shopping, for example. Each site requires consumers to navigate slightly differently; sites organize product categories in different ways, they provide different types of information about products, and they have different procedures for ordering and fulfillment. Our research has found that it takes customers an average of 20 to 30 minutes just to learn how to shop in most text-based Internet grocery-shopping systems. By contrast, it takes them only two to three minutes to learn how to shop in a 3-D virtual store modeled after a familiar bricks-and-mortar shop. The virtual store takes advantage of the shopper’s prior knowledge to make virtual shopping more intuitive.

In-store technology can also be difficult to use. I recently watched a string of customers walk up to a “meal solution” kiosk at a supermarket and attempt to print a recipe. After repeatedly pressing the display screen, each customer walked away in frustration. Shoppers thought that they were doing something wrong. They weren’t. The kiosk’s printer was out of paper, but it had no way of alerting customers.

Many technologies are viable concepts but fail because of poor execution. For example, the Checkout Channel repeated its broadcasts every ten minutes. That was just about the right length of time for consumers, who spend an average of eight minutes waiting in the checkout line. However, it irritated checkout staff, who had to listen to the material all day long and would often shut off the monitors.

When a Boston-area bank first tried out videoconferencing kiosks to sell financial services, customers refused to use them. The systems were located in closed booths that granted privacy but were uninviting. Simply by making the booths more open and their entrances more visible as people walked into a branch, the bank was able to substantially improve consumer acceptance.

It is very difficult to create one customer interface that works well for everyone. For example, Burger King tried installing video terminals in one of its restaurants to allow patrons to place their own orders. Younger customers loved them, but older people preferred to talk with human attendants.

I recently tested an on-line banking system and found that heavy users of automated teller machines gave it higher overall ratings than the “branch-wed” non-ATM customers did. However, the reverse was true when videoconferencing was added. It appeared that heavy ATM users actually disliked interacting with humans!

It’s sad to say, but many companies developing the next generation of customer interface technologies spend more time interacting with computers than with customers. As a result, the systems are often incompatible with consumers’ shopping habits. For example, an Internet start-up once launched a grocery-shopping system that grouped cold cereals by their main ingredients (rice, corn, or wheat, for example). Many shoppers had trouble finding their favorite brands because they didn’t know the ingredients.

The shopping cart altered the purchasing patterns of customers when it was introduced over 60 years ago. Today’s technologies can have equally profound effects on consumers’ behavior. For example, a Swedish grocery store discovered that by electronically adjusting prices according to the time of day, reducing prices in the evening, it was able to increase evening sales by 40% and double store traffic.

We have also found that consumers are more price sensitive when using text-based home-shopping systems that display lists of brands and prices than when using graphical systems that show realistic images of merchandise. Other researchers have reported that brand names become less important as the amount of detailed information about a product’s attributes increases.

In some cases, technology has produced less of an effect on consumers’ behavior than managers had feared. For example, a grocery retailer reported that impulse purchases were down by just 5% when customers shopped on-line. About the same amount of perishable products were purchased per order on-line as in the physical store.

When a customer encounters a retailer, it shouldn’t matter whether the encounter occurs via the Internet, through a catalog, by telephone, or in the physical store. The customer expects to find the same merchandise, offered at the same prices, with the same knowledgeable and courteous service.

Unfortunately, it’s often the case that a retailer’s operations are not well integrated across media. As a consequence, a frequent shopper may be given first-class treatment in the physical store but receive marginal service on the telephone or via the Internet. Retailers need to tap into the same product, customer, and transaction databases with all their communications media. For example, Harrah’s Entertainment has built a system that recognizes high rollers whether they are on-line, on the telephone, or in any of its casinos.

Over the years, various technologies have been introduced with much media fanfare. Then, if the actual performance failed to meet expectations, people wrote them off and shifted their attention to the next innovation. Examples include multimedia kiosks, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and video telephones. However, technology continues to evolve. Performance improves and prices drop. Today, artificial intelligence is used in the selection of retail sites and to facilitate one-to-one marketing programs; voice recognition routes callers to specific store departments; virtual reality is used to test new store layouts and shelf displays; and videoconferencing assists on-line shoppers. Retailers need to revisit past technologies periodically to consider whether there are new opportunities to create value for customers.

Most conventional retailers design their stores, product offerings, promotions, and services for the masses. They treat all shoppers alike even though customers’ needs and wants differ and so do the volume and profitability of their purchases. Treating all customers alike puts retailers at a distinct disadvantage relative to those electronic retailers that adjust their marketing programs instantly to match the needs of individual shoppers.

Advances in information technology can give conventional retailers the opportunity to overcome those problems. By setting up frequent-shopper programs and by linking customer profiles to UPC scanner data, for example, retailers can track the shopping patterns, sales volume, and profitability of their patrons. They can then mail out customer-specific fliers and promotions. When shoppers enter the store and swipe their frequent-shopper cards through a reader, a computer can print out customized shopping lists complete with recipes, coupons, and suggestions for replenishment purchases. Retailers can tailor their services in any number of ways using the available technology—if they focus on how it can help them help their customers.

For many years, people have said that a store’s location was a key for its success. Now the buzz is that, in the world of electronic retailing, location doesn’t matter. A consumer can do business with a merchant located across the country as easily as with one located across the street. In fact, the argument goes, having a physical store may prove to be a liability, burdening the conventional retailer with unnecessary overhead.

In theory, that may be true. But in practice, it’s false. The constraints of time and space still exist. Consumers can’t wait for many types of products to be shipped across the country or from a different country. Some products can’t be shipped at all. Customers may be reluctant to purchase on-line because the computer display is limited in its ability to convey important product information. They might prefer to shop at a local retailer because they know its reputation, location, store layout, product selection, and return policies.

Retailers can use technology to magnify rather than minimize the benefits of physical location. For example, imagine an Internet interface where customers access stores geographically rather than by URLs. A shopper views a map that shows the retail topography of the local town, highlighting stores that sell products of particular interest. He or she then selects a view showing specific brands, prices, store specials, and inventory information. A second view would highlight stores that will be open for the next hour. Such technology is already being built into the navigation systems of the next generation of American automobiles. It’s one of several approaches to bringing together the best features of electronic and conventional retailing.

It’s easy to be dazzled by new technologies and conclude that they represent the future of retailing. However, that conclusion would be wrong. Technology is just a platform for change. How we use the technology to create value for customers is what will determine the future—and that’s the opportunity we must address.

“Technology is just a platform for change. How we use the technology to create value for customers is what will determine the future—and that’s the opportunity we must address.”

If you’ve ever bought or sold a home, you’re familiar with the concept of “curb appeal.” A home with curb appeal looks inviting from the street, with fresh paint, attractive landscaping and a well-maintained appearance making you want to go inside. The same concept applies to your retail store and with eCommerce growing by leaps and bounds, curb appeal is more important than ever in attracting customers to a brick-and-mortar location.

But too many small retailers neglect the concept of curb appeal from the get-go. Others let their once-sparkling storefronts disintegrate through lack of maintenance.

Drive to your store. Is the signage easy to see? If you had never been to the store before, would you be able to find it? Does getting to the parking lot involve a life-threatening left turn across six lanes of traffic, or is there an easy way to get in? Is the parking lot well-lighted and safe, or scary and dark? Are there plenty of parking spaces?

Recently, I saw a new cupcake shop with a cute logo and yummy cupcakes in the window, but the whole effect was ruined by an overflowing trash can and disgusting food trash right outside. I didn’t go in. (The shop has since gone out of business…surprise, surprise.)

Last month I saw a new business with a great graphic displaying its name, “The Joint.” That’s a clever name for a medical marijuana dispensary, I thought. Then I got closer and realized it was actually a chiropractor’s office.

Do your store’s window displays draw you in? Do they convey the “brand” of your business (old-fashioned, chic, streamlined, modern, fun, creative)? Are your hours of operation easily visible to someone driving by?

Use signage, lighting and open or closed doors to tell people whether you’re open or not so they don’t waste time parking and get out only to be disappointed.

When people enter your store are they greeted immediately? Does someone look up and smile at them, or do clerks continue their conversations or shoot them daggers for interrupting their day?

Depending on what you sell, you may want to add background music, scented potpourri or other sensory attributes to make customers relax, stay a while – and spend more money.

In-store layout and signage are a science unto themselves. Paco Underhill is a retail expert whose books offer fascinating tips about increasing your retail sales through layout. One of his tips: Most people are right-handed and naturally go to the right when entering a store. Put your high-margin items there to get customers touching them.

Speaking of touching, did you know customers are more likely to buy something if they touch it? Those “Please don’t touch” signs near your breakable items might be a mistake.

Inside your store, can customers easily find what they need? Are sections of the store marked so they can see where to go? Is in-store signage, such as prices and sale items, clear and easy to read?

When a hot new gourmet grocery opened in my area, I was excited to try it. But the prices on the shelves were in such tiny type, I couldn’t easily compare and I never shopped there again.

Last, but not least, how enjoyable is the checkout experience? Is the line to wait clearly marked so shoppers don’t waste time? Do clerks acknowledge people waiting in line? (Just quick eye contact and a smiling, “Thanks for your patience. We’ll be right with you” can make all the difference). Do you place tempting impulse buys near the register to entertain customers and make more sales?

You don’t need to pay high prices for a high-quality industrial monitor or touch screen; you now have an affordable option. We are extremely confident in our products and back them up with a standard five-year warranty and a 30-day total satisfaction guarantee.

Retailers delight consumers, lift in-store sales and enter a digital media business. Product brands build brand equity and drive sales simultaneously while being supported by real-time data and analytics.