The Epson survey reveals that In the UK 100% of retailers say that they need to adapt and broaden their market focus to drive growth. As a result, and despite current economic pressures, over half of UK retailers are optimistic that their budgets for in-store point of sale (POS) advertising will increase substantially by 2020.
A survey of Australian and New Zealand retailers would probably reveal similar results.
The Epson 20|20 Vision Survey interviewed 500 retail brand and marketing managers across the five largest European economies – the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – to evaluate the retail industry’s use of in-store print and electronic POS signage today, and how it will change up to the year 2020.
The survey reveals that advances in POS technology and techniques, increasing competition and the drive for growth by diversifying into new specialist, mass or regional markets will result in more frequent print/electronic POS campaigns and, as a result, generate increased POS volumes overall. As a result, retailers predict that in-store POS campaigns will become much more dynamic and targeted in their design. While most retailers say that print will remain a vital component of in-store POS in the future, electronic POS will have a significant and growing presence. Today over half of all in-store POS activity is print-based, but this is predicted to fall to just over a third (39%) by 2020 when electronic POS will comprise the largest proportion of POS activity (61%).
In the future, the choice of using print and/or electronic POS will be linked much more closely to the product value and to the age and gender of the target customer. Retailers link the choice of POS media to the value of the product being promoted with print POS preferred to convey brand quality and dynamic electronic POS preferred for special promotions that change every couple of days. While print POS is the most popular medium used to promote high-end goods today (used by 85% of companies polled), retailers predict that they will adopt a more integrated media approach by 2020 – using print and electronic media almost equally. Electronic POS will remain the most popular media (75%) used to promote fast moving, short life-cycle commodity items by 2020.
“As campaigns become more frequent, more dynamic, more localised and more targeted to specific consumer demographics, both print and electronic POS media will play important roles in retailers’ sales strategies,” says Nick White, business manager, Professional Graphics, Epson. “Over the next few years there are significant opportunities for innovative POS production companies to meet the retailer’s needs for cost-effective, fast-turnaround, localised, quality print campaigns and fast-refresh, dynamic electronic campaigns.”
The Epson survey shows that reducing POS production costs and waste and improving campaign targeting and time to market are priorities for most retailers over the next few years. POS materials not being produced or supplied on time and failure to target the right demographic are the main reasons for missing in-store POS objectives. Consequently, 81% of UK retailers say that ‘design centrally/print locally’ is the single most important print production model to support their drive to achieve more frequent, time-sensitive and localised campaigns by 2020.
Epson UK
www.epson.co.uk
Thanks to Graphic Display World for this article. www.graphicdisplayworld.com
