Every ICA Kvantum store in the whole of Sweden has introduced digital display stands. Display stands make it possible to show current advertising films and price offers that are directly associated with the locations in the store where the customer makes a choice. As the display stand receives its information via the mobile telephone network, it is continuously updated with the latest advertising films and offers, that customers can recognise from seeing on TV and in the newspapers.

A new campaign every week
”We started off with a portable display stand having three displays in each store, which could be moved around to focus on a particular type of goods. Since then we have added fixed systems with larger displays. We use both sets of displays for new campaigns each week. We have the fixed installation on one of the best end walls of the store, and move the portable one around inside the store, depending on which campaign is in progress.

This system has turned out to be a real sales machine for us! We multiply our sales of certain articles and at the same time increase our margins. Our stockists are very pleased, and some want to have display stands on virtually every shelf gable end in the shop,” says ICA Kvantum’s marketing manager Jonas Lundberg.

ICA’s tests show massive increases
ICA Kvantum can confirm the effect of the displays on sales, both by means of its own tests and through information from suppliers. In one case, ICA carried out a seven week survey of how the advertising message via display stands influenced sales of various campaign goods and compared the results with stores which had a more traditional approach to price offers.

The tests showed a massive increase in sales of many different campaign products such as pasta, fruit juice, cleaning products and soap. While the usual pricing activities increased sales by between 23% and about 400%, the increases with the aid of displays were in the range 40% to 800%. “In general we doubled sales compared with the increase had we marketed products with the aid of flyers. We could never had obtained such a result with any other medium! A series of product demonstrations could possibly have given similar results, but they require staff, and staff are of course expensive.

We have suppliers who run the same activities with other media, for example weekly product flyers, and in ICA card in-store vending machines. In virtually all campaigns we get the best results by using displays at the campaign locations. They ensure that we get clear sales peaks, which in fact continue during the subsequent week, too. It seems as if the displays provide a more long-term effect than, for instance, our flyers,” comments Jonas Lundberg.

Simple with a complete supplier
ICA Kvantum uses display stands both for ICA’s own goods and for goods from major branded goods suppliers, within a long-dated agreement with ZetaDisplay. This means that ZetaDisplay controls and monitors the displays, and produces the offers that are to be shown, including films if necessary. ICA and the branded goods supplier have a single contact person at ZetaDisplay, who is responsible for production and manages the contacts with the stores.

“Our marketing planners are responsible for the media channel, but in practice they only decide which activities will be presented for a certain week. All we do centrally is then to check that the finished presentation agrees with ICA’s requirement for what is to be shown in the stores.”