Costcutter streamlines shelf labelling to improve sales and customer experiences

"It's time-consuming and even when you think you have every label, you always miss a few," says Juty. "Such errors would result in our customers becoming increasingly upset and losing confidence in our store. For example, if we had promoted an item at £1.50 on the shop floor but the till charged £2, the customer would think we were trying to rip them off. However, this was often because the promotions had finished and the product was back to its normal price but the shelf label had not been updated."

"My customers are getting used to a new way of shopping"

To mitigate the loss of customer confidence, the store was committed to reducing the number of discrepancies between the shop floor paper labels and the till price. In some cases, this resulted in products being sold for under the recommended retail price.

Juty comments, "This was especially a problem during COVID 19 when we simply didn't have the time and the manpower to be changing the price labels. At one point, this resulted in 850 items being sold for less than the recommended retail price. In this aspect, we lost a lot of margin during this time period".

An improved shopping experience

By streamlining the process of product labelling, Costcutter Culverstone has noticed the significant improvements to the staff and customer experience.

"The system has really improved my store. My staff are more confident working on the tills because they are less worried about any errors between the shop floor price and the till price," said Juty.

"Now, they can now spend the time they would have been updating the paper labels to concentrate more on the customer's needs. There are fewer disagreements over product prices and this leads to a stronger relationship between staff and customers. The customers also love the look of the labels. The promotions are very easy to identify because the label will turn from white to red. As a result, my customers are getting used to a new way of shopping."

"It's clear that there are long term benefits to the system"

Juty continued, "In the wine section, for example, visual promotions have influenced an increase in product purchases. The ESLs have pushed our promotional activity higher in a day and age where this is even more important for the customers."

Increasing sales
The estimated impact has been an increase in Costcutter's future turnover by up to 10%. Juty states, "Because of this, the payback from the staff time we saved and the increased sales is a lot quicker than I imagined. Panasonic estimated this to be around three years, but with the current turnover, I am expecting this to be nearer 1 ½ years. This makes ESL a winner all around and a long-term permanent solution for stores with higher turnovers".

Responding to COVID 19
In response to the COVID 19 outbreak, Peter Juty has also considered the benefits that the ESL system will offer when adapting to the increased pressure on essential stores.

Juty said, "I wish I had the system before the COVID outbreak. It would have made it a lot easier to keep on top of everything and to update the sales prices. We had an inconsistent range of food coming in because we were trying to order whatever was available. We were also responding to new demands for products such as baking goods. I was impressed by how easy the system was to use. With the ESL system, we would have been able to automatically update these labels and ensure they were correctly sold at a recommended retail price."

Juty continued, "As we respond to the outbreak post-lockdown, however, the ESL system is already benefitting the store's social distancing policy. We have to restrict the number of customers and staff on the shop floor, and now that we don't require up to three people changing the prices, we have more room for our customers to come in. That's a major benefit for our customers' experience and our revenue".