Across the board, expectation for digital POS isn’t imminent in the next year. Generally, FMCG brands and major grocers are the least receptive to this model, whereas mid level retailers are slightly more interested in how digital POS may work for their customers.

Digital POS solutions are on the rise – however right now are still typically price prohibitive for a large scale store transformation programme of most interest to our major UK retailers. Current technology solutions are growing – indeed there are many software network solutions in the market that offer multi-outlet signage platforms, with the chance to distribute your marketing messages across your retail estate in seconds.

‘Just too expensive right now’

But it’s expensive – particularly the hardware; you’ll need a raft of screens and devices to show your messaging on, sufficient wireless network bandwidth and IT hardware, and someone to manage and co-ordinate the solution for you.

And it’s this reason why brands and retailers are reluctant to go too excited about the potential just yet, as the barriers to entry are too high.

There are great resources out there to keep up to date with what the latest developments in digital POS are. If you’ve signed up to our newsletter we’ll keep you up to date over the coming months and years to come, but you can also check out resources such as Digital Signage Today for how the advanced US digital POS market is progressing. This great YouTube video by YCD Multimedia is also a great example of what the future may look like for POS for retailers particularly.

What about brands?

Combined studies by RetailResearch suggest there’ll be an approx. 1.6 million digital screens in use in the UK by 2026. With this comes more opportunity to advertise, whether in major retailers or the food and beverage sector. Understandably, brands are more keen to unlock the chance to target their respective audiences in using emerging, high interest and engagement channel, however with the generally low scale of UK digital POS network that currently exists, expectation remains conservative.

What does this mean for me?

Whilst brands and retailers are expecting digital POS to be key in the next 12 months, as with anything we collectively remain committed to finding ways we can improve our POS and marketing operations. And that’s not saying there’s no interest – there definitely is. With this in mind, it’s a ‘keep in touch’ and ‘watch from afar’ recommendation from us. We’re expecting big things – just not yet.