A Study on Introduction of IoT Infrastructure based on BSC and AHP: Focusing on Electronic Shelf Label

Abstract

The Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) is an alternative to the paper price label attached to merchandise shelves and is attracting attention as a retail IoT infrastructure that will lead the innovation of offline retail outlets. In general, when introducing a substitute product, the company tends to consider the financial factors such as the efficiency of the investment cost compared to the existing product or the reduction of the operating cost. However, considering only financial factors in the decision-making process, it may not properly reflect the various values associated with corporate strategy and the requirements of stakeholders. In this study, 8 evaluation items (Investment Cost, Operating Cost, Quality Level, Customer Management, Job Efficiency, Maintenance, Functional Expandability, and Store Image) based on BSC’s 4 perspectives (Financial, Customer, Internal Business Process, Learning & Growth), and using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to measure the priorities of evaluation items for domestic small supermarket employees. As a result of the research, priority was given in order of Customer, Learning & Growth, Internal Business Process, and Financial aspects among the evaluation items for adopting the price label, and the electronic price label was supported with higher importance than the paper price label. In contrast to the priorities of the financial aspects of most prior studies, the items of Learning & growth and customer perspectives have relatively high priorities. In particular, respondents classified by job group, The priorities of the 8 evaluation items were different among the groups. These results are expected to provide implications for both companies (retail outlets) and ESL providers (manufacturers and service providers) who are considering the introduction of ESL.