Electronic Shelf Labels in Retail

Electronic shelf labels are small displays on the shelf edge that receive their price by radio from the retailer’s stock system. They replace paper tickets, save the walk round the store and keep shelf and till prices identical. Price-marking law is unchanged: unit prices and reduction rules apply to the display exactly as they did to paper.

This guide follows the order in which a retailer actually asks the questions: is it worth it, which technology is relevant, who supplies it, what may appear on the label, and how to start without bringing a store to a halt. The publisher is Keonex, which sells systems of this kind. How we handle that is explained in Editorial methodology and About this site. The legal sections summarise legislation and are not legal advice.

What changes day to day

Anyone who has run a weekly promotion changeover knows the routine: print tickets, sort them by aisle, swap them one by one, then collect what is left of the old promotion. Kaufland, a German grocer, describes the gain in exactly these terms, an “immense time saving” on price cuts because each label no longer has to be printed and slotted in by hand. Rewe, another German chain, said back in 2015 that its main aim was relieving staff, not price flexibility; according to Stiftung Warentest its stores were then swapping more than 100 paper tickets a week by hand.

The second gain is agreement between shelf and till. Kaufland gives the example of a promotion ticket put out too early by mistake. In 2017 the Hamburg consumer centre found, in a spot check, differences between shelf and scanner, missing or illegible unit prices and pack-size reductions that were not reflected. Electronic labels do not remove those errors on their own. They move them into data maintenance: bad master data now reaches every display faster.

The third effect is on labour. It is not saved, it is shifted, from swapping and slotting to assigning, checking and fixing faults. If you plan on “headcount saved”, the business case is too optimistic. The honest question is whether the same people get more time on the shop floor.

Where ESL already hang in European retail

The publicly documented examples show how different the starting points are. Everything below comes from the linked sources, and older figures are marked as such. They are German because those are the cases we could verify; UK cases are still to be added.

Two lessons follow without stretching the evidence. First, many retailers start where prices change most often and freshness matters: fruit and vegetables, bakery, promotional lines. Second, OBI shows that the radio infrastructure can sometimes be shared with the existing network. Whether that works in your store is decided by a radio survey, not by a press release.

Technology: what matters when you choose

An ESL system has three layers, which cause different amounts of trouble in practice: the label, the radio link (gateway or access point) and the software that matches products to labels. The basics are in What is an electronic shelf label?. Here we deal with the decisions.

Display: e-paper or LCD

Most grocery labels use e-paper. The display reflects light like paper and needs power only when the image changes. Kaufland gives this in its own explanation as the reason the tickets run for years on a coin cell and are hard to tell from paper. Segment LCDs show only digits and a few characters and need power to hold the image. A label that can show only a number is enough for the price, but not for the unit price, origin or promotion wording in a familiar typeface.

Size follows what has to be printed on it. A chilled-shelf label with unit price and pack size needs more area than a promotion price on a pallet. Plan sizes from real shelf rails, not from a catalogue.

Colour

Colour e-paper labels allow promotion red and notes such as “vegan” in the colours shoppers know from paper; Kaufland uses exactly this argument. Colour often lengthens the time for an image change and can raise energy use, though. These are manufacturer claims, so get them in writing for your configuration.

Radio, gateways and battery

Labels receive data by radio from gateways or access points, and the technology differs by manufacturer. A 2015 trade article described a two-way 2.4 GHz network, other vendors run their own proprietary radio protocols, and the Bluetooth SIG has since adopted a dedicated Electronic Shelf Label Profile. Three things matter for the purchase: how many labels one gateway serves, how coverage behind metal shelving and in chilled areas was measured, and what happens in a radio outage. In all the systems mentioned, a label that receives no new value keeps showing the last one.

On battery life only orders of magnitude can be documented: “years” on a coin cell according to Kaufland, up to five years according to PC-WELT in 2015. In reality it depends on the number of image changes, temperature, radio frequency and display. Ask about the assumed profile behind the figure: how many updates a day, at what temperature.

Cold is a topic of its own. PC-WELT wrote in 2015 that the labels of the time worked between 0 and 50 °C and were not suitable for frozen goods. That was the state of play ten years ago, and manufacturers now advertise chilled and frozen variants. Check the data sheet of the exact variant and hang it in a test cabinet.

Link to stock and till systems

The least glamorous topic is often the most expensive. The label shows what the platform tells it, and the platform gets prices and product data from your ERP or till. Before you order, settle who owns the product master, how promotional prices are passed over with their validity period, whether labels are paired to products by scanning the barcode, and which interface your system really speaks. “Standard interface” in a quote means little until it says who builds and pays for the adaptation on your side.

Costs: what the price depends on

We did not come across a per-label price that could be printed responsibly. The figures in circulation are vendor offers on trade portals in dollars, press examples without a unit price, or ten years old. PC-WELT wrote in 2015 of a “high five-figure sum” for a complete installation with 150,000 products and mentioned leasing in the low four figures; nothing allows us to transfer that to today’s stores. We therefore publish no price range we cannot support.

What can be listed cleanly are the items every quote should contain:

On the benefit side are saved printing and swapping time, less paper, fewer differences between shelf and till, and the ability to cut prices of perishable goods quickly. Kaufland and Rewe cite these arguments publicly; neither gives figures to back them. Use your own assumptions instead. The total cost calculator works with your values, not ours, and shows its assumptions.

There is a rule of thumb: the investment pays back sooner with many price changes a week, many products per store and expensive staff time, and less so with a small range that rarely changes. That is plausibility, not a calculation.

Vendors: comparing without inventing market share

We did not find reliable, independent market shares for the UK or Europe; the freely available market reports contradict each other or are sales brochures. We therefore give no league table. What can be documented are the vendors in the cases above: VusionGroup (formerly SES-imagotag) at MediaMarkt/Saturn, dm and OBI. Trade articles add Diebold Nixdorf and Displaydata for the European market, and a Swedish share analysis lists Pricer, Hanshow and SoluM as other large manufacturers. That says something about presence, nothing about fit for your store.

Compare vendors with questions that can be answered in writing:

1. References in your setting: are there stores of comparable size, shelving and chilled areas that you can visit?
2. Radio planning: is coverage measured before the quote, and who is liable if labels are unreachable afterwards?
3. Interfaces: which till and ERP systems are connected in production, and who builds the link?
4. Openness: can labels and platform be bought separately, or is switching tied to the manufacturer? Can you export your data?
5. Running costs: what does the platform cost per year, and what happens to the price if you close stores?
6. Maintenance: response times, spare parts, battery and display warranty.
7. Data protection and security: where does the data run, who has access, how is the radio network secured?

Keonex is one of the vendors of this technology. This page deliberately contains no Keonex product claims until they have been agreed. The same goes for any vendor comparison we publish later: criteria first, result after.

Law: what price-marking rules ask of the label

This section is written from a Great Britain perspective, with the EU rule alongside. It summarises the Price Marking Order 2004 in its as-made text on legislation.gov.uk; later amendments were not checked. A solicitor should review your own case, especially promotions and special cases.

Marking at the shelf

Under article 4 of the Order, where a trader indicates that a product is or may be for sale to a consumer, the selling price must be indicated; the duty does not apply to products sold from bulk or to advertisements. The selling price is the final price including VAT and all other taxes. Article 7 requires the indication to be “unambiguous, easily identifiable and clearly legible”, given in proximity to the product and available without the shopper having to ask for help. An electronic label meets this as a paper ticket does, provided it is legible in practice. A display unreadable in glare, or one that alternates the price between two screens, can run into trouble here. E-paper helps legibility, but is no guarantee.

Unit price

Article 5 requires a unit price for products sold from bulk and for products that must be quantity-marked or made up in prescribed quantities under the Weights and Measures Act 1985. Exemptions include products whose unit price equals the selling price, and certain pre-packaged goods and bread in small shops (relevant floor area up to 280 square metres). Schedule 2 also exempts products reduced because of damage or the danger of deterioration. The unit price is normally per kilogram, litre, metre, square metre or cubic metre, with the exceptions in Schedule 1, for example 100 g or 100 ml for many foods and 10 g for herbs and spices. Where a supplementary non-metric quantity is also shown, the unit price must predominate (article 7(4)).

For label design this means room has to be left for the unit price and the data feed must supply it. When pack size changes, the unit price must change with it. A label that is too small is a legal risk, not a design problem.

Price reductions: the EU 30-day rule and the UK position

In the EU the rule is fixed. Article 6a of Directive 98/6/EC, inserted by the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161, requires the lowest price applied in at least the 30 days before the reduction to be shown as the prior price. In 2024 the Court of Justice held in Aldi Süd (C-330/23) that the percentage reduction must also be calculated from that lowest price; merely adding the lowest price is not enough. If you operate in the EU, an electronic label makes this easier to meet when the platform keeps the 30-day low, and easier to breach when a price changes ten times in a day and the history is not stored.

The Price Marking Order does not copy that rule. Its article 9 lets a trader indicate a general reduction by a notice, provided the details are prominently displayed, unambiguous, easily identifiable and clearly legible, and it names no day count. Whether a “was” price is acceptable in Great Britain is decided under consumer protection law, not under the Order. Law-firm commentary reports that the old guidance under which a price counted as a valid comparison after 28 days is no longer treated as a safe harbour, and that the CMA wants reference prices to be genuine. The CMA’s November 2025 price transparency guidance (CMA209) is about drip and partitioned pricing; it does not settle reference pricing. For a UK promotion, take advice and keep the price history anyway.

Ask every vendor whether the platform keeps a price history per product and store, whether it calculates the reference price automatically, and whether that reference is provided for in the label layout.

When shelf and till disagree

Electronic labels leave open the question of which price applies. Stiftung Warentest wrote in 2015, on German law, that the till price applies and a retailer may honour the shelf price as a goodwill gesture; that is an old German editorial view, not a UK statement, and we have not verified an equivalent for Great Britain. Seek advice for your jurisdiction. Whatever the answer, constant discrepancies invite complaints and enforcement attention. The best protection is a reliable reconciliation: after every update the label should report back what it actually shows.

Dynamic prices: possible, publicly contested

Fast price changes are where consumer groups start. The Hamburg consumer centre feared “arbitrary pricing” and less transparency in 2017 and pointed to a wholesaler that wanted to use labels for higher prices between 10 pm and 5 am. Rewe said in 2015 that it did not want “petrol-station-style price changes”. Kaufland says today that its labels are used in the daytime only for cuts. PC-WELT considered hourly price changes in grocery unlikely in 2015 because of competition, and time-limited promotions feasible.

For retailers this means a decision taken before the purchase, not after: what rules will you set yourselves for price changes? Is there a cap on the number of changes, an approval step, a log? A published self-commitment like Kaufland’s is not a legal duty, but it can build trust and does not replace internal rules.

Rolling out without chaos: five steps

The order below is an editorial recommendation, not a manufacturer specification.

1. Measure the starting point. How many price changes are there per week, how many minutes does a changeover take, what is the error rate between shelf and till? Without these numbers no benefit can be shown later.
2. Clean the data. The product master decides everything. Duplicate barcodes, missing quantities or wrongly maintained unit prices would otherwise appear on the new display.
3. Pilot in one store or one department. As OBI, dm and Kaufland show, many retailers begin with a limited scope or with categories whose prices change often. Test the chilled area, metal shelving and the worst radio corner, not the showroom.
4. Settle pairing and processes. Who hangs labels, who scans, who checks? What happens on a shelf reset, a range change, a faulty label? Write it down before you roll out.
5. Check, document, roll out. Sample shelf against till before the rollout, record the results, and bring in legal review for unit pricing and reductions.

What this guide does not answer

It contains no price list, no market shares and no assessment of individual products, because we have no reliable sources for them. Keonex product details are also deliberately missing. Where a figure is more than two years old, the text says so. If you miss an answer or think a statement is out of date, write to us via About this site.