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How can retailers ensure that their marketing messages elicit the desired response, that is, more sales? They need to speak directly to their target audience.

Because it can be customized on the fly, digital merchandising allows retailers to respond to the unique demographics at their stores so they can create highly focused marketing messages.

Shopper Insights and Digital Signage

The phrase 'shopper insights' is used to describe the research that retailers do to try and understand how the shopping experience affects purchases and brand loyalty.

These shopper insights help retailers analyze sales data to create in-store advertising that targets customers with timely messages designed to turn their attention to particular items or specials.

To take advantage of shopper insights, retailers need an advertising medium that is flexible and adaptable. For this reason, many are beginning to turn to digital or electronic signage.

How Digital Merchandising Works

Digital merchandising uses electronic signs to promote certain items and upsell customers. Here are some examples of how it's used:

' Monitors above the counters at quick service restaurants present video images of higher margin meals
' Plasma screens in department stores highlight sales and new products
' Interesting video displays reduce perceived waiting times at bank branches
' Small video screens at the gas pump promote car washes and convenience store specials

The technology involved in digital signage is straightforward. And with the costs of the hardware dropping rapidly, digital signage is an option that makes sense for retailers of all sizes.

Digital Signage and Targeted Advertising

So how does digital signage help retailers use those valuable shopper insights in their in-store marketing? By offering the flexibility to make quick changes to marketing messages.

For example, analysis of shopper insights might tell a general merchandiser that women with small children tend to shop in the morning. A digital message can highlight specials on ready-to-serve meals or a new line of baby food during the morning hours. The message can be shifted at other times of the day to target other shoppers. With electronic signs, new messages can be uploaded and appear in stores within minutes.

By combining their knowledge of customer shopping habits with eye-catching video images, retailers can create effective marketing messages that influence shoppers at the point of sale, where most purchasing decisions are made.

Digital Merchandising and Shopper Insights ' A Great Marketing Tool

It's true that digital signage requires an initial hardware investment that static print displays do not. But retailers must weigh the costs against the benefits:

' Unlike print ads, changes to electronic signs do not require long lead times.
' Individual retailers can quickly and easily incorporate shopper insights from their particular location in their in-store advertising.
' Multimedia messages offer compelling, targeted messages that are hard for customers to ignore.

The combination of standard features in our digital merchandising products gives your business control over content and design.

Retailers have long invested in research to tell them how their customers make purchasing decisions, and now they are seeing the benefits of digital merchandising, the in-store advertising tool that best uses that customer research.