Shopping For Appliances Made Easier At Sears With Digital Product Signs by Leena Munjal, SHC Speaks
At Sears Holdings, we continuously seek new ways to make shopping more convenient for our members. We also look for ways to reduce manual tasks by automating them for our store associates so they can spend more time assisting our members.
Last year, we deployed new digital price signs in the Home Appliances department at more than 300 Sears stores. These digital signs ensure that our members not only get the most accurate pricing, but also more product information such as description, color choices, specifications, reviews and ratings. It also enables our associates to focus their attention on finding the right products and meeting the needs of our members rather than manually changing signs when prices fluctuate.
There’s also a strong environmental impact. Last year, over 100,000 signs were replaced with digital signs (shown below) – allowing us to greatly reduce the amount of paper we use to print signs.
New digital signs
Among the many benefits of this technology, we can now quickly change pricing to provide the best value or share helpful product information within seconds as members research top appliance brands we carry.
Also, many of our products use digital tablets as price signs, allowing members to interact with the product like never before. Touching the tablet reveals additional colors, or more information on the product, like specifications and dimensions.
Product overview on digital tablets
Product specifications on digital tablets
Members can also read reviews on the products from others who have previously purchased the item.
Read product reviews on digital tablets
We also added a feature to enter your email address directly into the digital tablet and receive an email with the product you looked at in the store. That way, members can do more research at home and have the product information at their disposal.
Receive product information via email on digital tablets
As we look ahead in 2015 we plan to expand these digital signs to Home Appliances departments in another 250 stores and continue to test in other areas of our stores like our shoe department.
Expanding digital signs into our Shoe departments
Our focus continues to be to find new ways to make it easier for our members and customers to research products, regardless of whether they start their research online or in-store.
We look forward to your interaction with this new integrated retail capability in our stores as we continue to find new ways to save you time and make your shopping experience more convenient.
Leena Munjal is SVP of Member Experience and Integrated Retail.
