Shoppers' acceptance and perceptions of electronic shelf labels

Abstract

The emergence of online grocery retailers challenges the pricing strategies of bricks-and-mortar supermarkets. Retailers can use electronic shelf labels (ESLs) to adopt dynamic pricing strategies, to reduce price adjustment costs, and to decrease the error potential associated with wrong prices. To date, no study has investigated consumer perspective on ESLs. The present research employs a field experiment to investigate consumers' acceptance and perceptions of ESLs. In line with the technology acceptance model, the findings reveal that shoppers perceive ESLs as easy to use; however, they are largely unaware of the benefits of ESLs. Furthermore, ESLs provide an easy way to identify a product's price. The results also indicate that ESLs positively influence product quality inferences and store image but do not affect price fairness perceptions.