Electronic shelf labels in consumer electronics and appliance stores

In consumer electronics, an electronic shelf label earns its place through speed. A customer compares the price of a television on their phone while standing in front of it, and a shop that needs a day to react either loses that sale or makes it at a price it no longer wants.

Then come the energy label, finance offers and product data: duties and jobs the label can make easier or get in the way of, taken one at a time below.

Why electronics is the sector most sensitive to speed

In a supermarket the business case is usually hours saved on relabelling. In electronics the pull is different: the gap between the shelf price and the price online. A store has few lines compared with a hypermarket, but each one is expensive and sits on a price-comparison site.

Two public cases show it unusually clearly.

Media Markt-Saturn Netherlands, 2014. According to its supplier Pricer, all 45 stores in the country had electronic labels from February 2014. The chain adjusted prices daily in store and online, reloading around 1.5 million prices a day and comparing them daily with the prices it found on the internet. The Pricer text is a commercial press release with no result figures; it only says the chain regained market share. Treat it as a description of the mechanics, not proof of profitability.

POWER Norway. Its price promise benchmarks against a single competitor, Elkjøp, through a “price robot” that, by the company’s own account, checks the rival’s prices every 15 minutes and updates both the website and the electronic labels in its stores. This is the extreme version of the idea: a rule, not a person, decides the price of each line.

The pattern repeats. Labels add little on their own; what they add is a pricing system that reaches the shelf without someone with a roll of paper in between. If the pricing system takes a day to decide, the label does not fix that. The hard part of the project is the source of the data, covered in the page on shelf versus till.

What the rules say, and what they do not

The previous price when you advertise a reduction

A UK shop that moves prices often and advertises them as reductions is judged under the misleading-pricing rules, including the Price Marking Order 2004 and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (section 226). There is no fixed 30-day reference period in the UK as there is in the EU, so the practical question is whether your “was” price is genuine, and for that you need to know what the price was. With many lines and near-daily changes, the problem is not displaying the old price but proving it. The reference-price rules are explained here and the regulation map places the rest. If label prices follow automatic rules, also read what the rules say about dynamic pricing, which today concerns mainly distance sales.

The energy label

This is where there is the most noise and the least clarity, and it depends on where you trade. Great Britain has its own retained regulations (the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information Regulations 2021), while Ireland and Northern Ireland follow the EU framework. The EU text is the one described below. Check which regime applies to your shops.

Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 requires the dealer to display the label supplied by the supplier visibly, and that duty reaches online sales (art. 5). Each product group then has its own delegated regulation.

For televisions and monitors, Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/2013 requires in article 4 that each display carries the supplier’s label at the point of sale, in front, hung or otherwise clearly visible. It allows one exception: an electronic label on the screen itself may replace the printed one, provided the set stays on while customers can see it.

That answers the most common question: a shelf-edge electronic label cannot, on its own, be the energy label of the product. The exception speaks of the appliance’s own screen, not another device next to it. This is a reading of the text, not a ruling by an authority, and in a specific case you should ask the competent market surveillance authority.

Phones and tablets are the newer example. Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1669 applies from 20 June 2025 and covers energy efficiency, battery life, protection against dust and water, and drop resistance, according to the notice for retailers from Ireland’s SEAI. A compliance consultancy, answering a question at a webinar for dealers in February 2026, said that a digital screen beside the product is not enough: the printed label is needed, placed next to the product, hung from it or somewhere clearly tied to that model, and only televisions have the “screen switched on” exception. That is a private company’s interpretation, not the Commission’s, but it fits the text of the regulations.

The same source has a warning useful to anyone fitting price labels. For light sources, nothing, including shelf price tags, may cover the energy efficiency arrow on the packaging. An electronic label takes space and must not hide a mandatory label.

Where the electronic label can help is in distance selling and data: the energy class is a product attribute and can travel to the pricing system like the price. Keeping that class consistent between the website and the shelf is a data job, not a screen job.

Finance on the shelf

“From X pounds a month” next to a television is common. If the promotion states an interest rate or any figure for the cost of credit, FCA rules expect the key information alongside it, normally a representative example with the APR, and that applies to adverts in store as much as online. Two practical consequences follow. A small label cannot carry all that content, so many shops put the offer on a poster and only the cash price on the label. And consumer credit law is moving in Europe: Directive (EU) 2023/2225 applies in EU member states from 20 November 2026, while the UK has its own regime. This is not legal advice; anyone showing finance in store should have the wording approved by the lender.

What the label can do besides show the price

An electronic label need not show only the price. In electronics the spec sheet is a common reason a customer calls an assistant, and several ESL makers include NFC or a QR code on the label. That allows a link to the product page, reviews or the energy class. There is no independent study that quantifies how many sales this moves, and a brochure figure should not be taken on trust, but the idea is clear: a customer already comparing on a phone can do it on your product page instead of a competitor’s.

Two limits appear. The first is size: a small label takes little text, and with finance, a previous price and a QR code it runs out of room. The second is colour and technology: most e-paper labels refresh slowly and in few colours, while an LCD uses more power but shows more. The criteria for choosing are in LCD versus e-paper.

Who has done it, with dates

Two caveats on this table. The figures come from the chain or its supplier, and the 400,000 hours is a Currys claim with no published methodology. And no public source lets us say, with the same confidence, what the current state of rollouts is at other UK electrical retailers.

What it costs to think it through in this sector

The cost of an installation does not depend on the sector but on the number of labels, their size, the gateway and the integration. In electronics the number of labels per store is lower than in a supermarket, while each label tends to be larger and dearer, and the cost of integrating with the website and pricing tool is spread over fewer points of sale. The TCO calculator lets you enter your own numbers, and the pricing guide explains the components. To choose a vendor there is a comparison of manufacturers.

Questions to ask before you start

• Who decides the price of each line and how often, and does that price reach the till and the website at the same time?
• Is a price history kept per line and store, so a “was” price can be shown and defended when a reduction is advertised?
• Where is the mandatory energy label for each product family, and does the electronic label hide it in any case?
• What is shown in a finance offer, and who signs off the wording?
• What happens with labels on display models, window items and outlet stock, which move more than the rest?

Once these are settled, the rollout follows the general path of any ESL guide. Anyone looking for a specific supplier for electronics can see Keonex’s electronics solution; Keonex is the publisher of this site, and the relationship is explained in About us.

On to other sectors

The sectors index compares size, pace of price change and regulation across the rest of retail. The sectors closest by number of lines are DIY and hardware and fashion; the furthest are bookshops and jewellery.