Electronic labels for shelfs market to grow 6x times by 2019, as per ABI

ABI reports over the next 5 years Electronic shelf labels (ESL) are set to grow beyond retail markets in legislated countries, with revenues increasing six fold to almost US$2 billion by 2019. In its latest report, “Next Gen Retail: Electronic Shelf Labels”, ABI Research outlines how ESLs will be a key link in the retail technology chain, representing a great starting point when NFC or BLE is integrated. Retailer’s attention has been caught by other technologies, but the ideal scenario and end game for most will be a tightly integrated system that consists of ESL, smartphone applications, BLE beacons, indoor location, mobile payments, digital coupons/loyalty, customer analytics, and omnichannel marketing and pricing. ESLs are a perfect starting point, bringing a return on investment-based traditional brick and mortar bottlenecks, while also opening the door to next generation services and revenue opportunities. Senior analyst Patrick Connolly commented, “ESL, in combination with NFC and/or BLE solves ongoing retailer issues like, out-of-stocks, check-out expenditure reduction, manual price coordination overheads elimination, inventory and store layout management, omnichannel consistency, and efficient price management of shrinkage/perishable goods, delivering an RoI within 18 months on these use cases alone. With integrated connectivity, it also brings future potential ar...