electronic shelf label (commerce) (ESL)

Electronic Shelf Labels(ESL) are electronic price tags attached to retail shelves. Commonly, printed price information is used to indicate the price of products, which is attached to the sales shelf in plastic stickers so that the buyer can see the price of the product behind it.

Since the price of the same product can change due to sales promotions or clearance sales, appropriate price changes can be made much faster by electronic price labels than by printing new paper price labels.

Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL), Photo: NCR

The electronic price labels can be captured and changed at any time by handheld scanners. Each electronic price label has a bar code that can be scanned by the handheld scanner. The hand scanner is connected via radio to the product server, from which it receives the current price for the respective product. This is then shown on the display.

However, the electronic price tags can also be connected to the company server via radio and can thus be changed directly, without scanning. Corresponding radio systems operate in the frequency range between 4.8 MHz and 5.6 MHz. This frequency range is chosen so that it cannot interfere with WiFi or RFID frequencies. For ESL display, one uses bistable displays such as e-paper or bistable liquid crystal displays, or else battery-powered LCD displays.

With wireless ESL systems, electronic price tags can be adapted to marketing promotions at short notice from corporate headquarters.