From price tag to connected shelf infrastructure: new add-on functions of ESL technology

French retail group Carrefour is going particularly far as part of its "Carrefour 2030" strategic plan. Together with technology provider Vusion, the company aims to digitize all of its hypermarkets and supermarkets in France by 2030. The electronic shelf labels themselves serve as the basic building block within this IoT infrastructure: they enable real-time price updates across all stores and use a pick-to-light function to guide employees to the right products. What matters most is the interplay with other IoT technologies – smart rails and AI cameras supply the location and image data needed to automatically detect stock issues, price discrepancies, and planogram errors.

Carrefour expects this to deliver benefits on several levels at once: greater productivity through automated routine tasks, a smoother shopping experience, fewer out-of-stocks, better e-commerce processes thanks to product geolocation, and a new retail media channel directly at the shelf.

As one of the world's largest consumer-owned cooperatives, Co-op depends on its member base – roughly 6.5 million members hold a stake in the company. That's exactly where the add-on function of its ESLs comes in: it turns the shelf itself into a starting point for new memberships.

Using an NFC feature on the electronic shelf labels, customers can simply tap their smartphone against the ESL and get routed directly to Co-op's membership sign-up page. What was once a simple price tag becomes an active touchpoint for the loyalty program. According to current plans, the technology is set to be available across all of the company's roughly 2,300 stores by the end of 2026.

At US retail giant Walmart, a different benefit takes center stage: easing the burden on staff during stocking and picking processes. So-called stock-to-light and pick-to-light functions let associates activate LED lights on the digital shelf labels to show where merchandise needs to be restocked or which items should be pulled together for online orders.

According to Walmart, approximately 2,300 U.S. stores were equipped with the technology in March 2026; the plan was to roll out the technology to the entire U.S. store network within a year. Price changes themselves remain employee-driven and are approved centrally – meaning the technology isn't meant to automate pricing decisions, Walmart says, but rather to speed up their execution and cut down on errors.

German food retailer Kaufland is now deploying the technology specifically where price changes happen most often: in its in-house bakeries. Building on its successful use in produce departments, digital price tags are now also being introduced where seasonal assortment changes, promotions, or evening discounts on baked goods require constant adjustments.

In total, Kaufland is installing around 100,000 digital price tags in the bakeries of its more than 770 German stores; across other countries – including Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Moldova – more than 170,000 additional labels are planned for over 1,550 stores. For employees, the company says, this mainly means one thing: less time spent manually swapping paper tags and more capacity for freshness checks and shelf restocking.

British supermarket chain Asda is also expanding what its ESLs can do. As part of a rollout across more than 250 larger Express stores, QR codes on the shelf labels let customers pull up allergen information right at the shelf. More than 700,000 labels are expected to be installed as part of the rollout.

The starting point was a several-month trial at a store in Manchester, where the biggest benefit, according to Asda, was the time freed up for staff – time that could instead go toward customer service, handling deliveries, and restocking shelves. New stores are also set to come equipped with the technology from day one going forward.

As different as these five examples are in detail, a common pattern emerges: electronic shelf labels are evolving from a simple price-display tool into infrastructure for a wide range of use cases. The core benefit stays the same across all examples – time savings, fewer errors, and greater efficiency, freeing up employees for other, higher-value tasks. Beyond that, though, the examples also point to broader add-on benefits: integration with AI-powered detection systems, the coordination of workflows right at the shelf, new touchpoints for customer loyalty, and greater transparency through additional product information. For retailers, this means the investment decision behind digital price tags is no longer just a cost question – it's a strategic choice about which of these add-on functions at the shelf will deliver the greatest value going forward.