Point of Sale Success – Part 2: Importance of Shelf Labels
- By
- Tom Modeen
Shelf Labels: An Essential Tool in Improving Store Efficiency, Accuracy, Security and Merchandising
The retailer is challenged daily with item price increases and necessary changes in product merchandising. The task of ensuring that the price 
for every item on the shelf is current is formidable. Applying updated price stickers to each item is too labor intensive and difficult to manage, Price stickers also open up the retailer to price switching. There are many reasons listed below why experienced managers switch to shelf labels.
The act of price switching, or intentionally altering price tags or stickers on merchandise in an effort to pay an amount less than what the owner is actually selling the item for, is an common form of shoplifting.
The only suitable solution to this dilemma is to employ the use of shelf labels printed with 
product description, bar code and price. Shelf labels provide the opportunity to quickly view shelf locations for out of stock items. If you change the product mix in a section of your store, all you need to do is stock the new item and apply a shelf label to the specific item location. The same would apply to product price changes, which would only require one new shelf label to effect the price.
The bar codes on the shelf labels would match the bar codes on the products selected and subsequently, at POS checkout. Therefore, all pricing is consistent between stock and checkout. This eradicates customer price confusion, ill will and price switching.
Shelf labels also play a major role in making inventory re-ordering and inventory counts faster and simpler. Using an inventory handheld
scanner, the employee scans the shelf label bar code and enters the quantity to be ordered, or in the case of inventory, the quantity on hand. Price or sale changes can also be effected when the inventory handheld is put to use in scanning the shelf label bar code.
The Hamacher Resource Group presented an outstanding series on merchandising, shelf labeling and front store management for the National Community Pharmacists Association. See Hamacher on Merchadising for more insights.
More Reading: Part 1 Creating a POS Item File | Part 3 Ordering Inventory
