Bon-Ton Adopts RFID Technology To Improve Customer Experience And Sales Efficiency
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Handheld RFID system allow quick and efficient restocking and increases associate productivity.
The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. has announced that it had adopted RFID Technology from Zebra Technologies Corporation for use in more than 180 of its Bon-Ton stores. The handheld RFID inventory management platform will help improve the customer experience, allow for quick and efficient restocking of merchandise, and increase sales.
Vice President of Store Operations, The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc., Lisa Celebre, explained, “Bon-Ton selected Zebra because of its cutting-edge RFID technology and RFID industry leadership. We look forward to expanding this rollout to include additional use cases across all of our stores in support of our omnichannel strategy to support our customers’ changing shopping habits.”
According to store audits, the manual system previous used by Bon-Ton resulted in as much as 20 percent of merchandise in certain categories to be missing from the sales floor in any given week, resulting in missed sales opportunities. The RFID inventory system provides deeper merchandise visibility and dramatically increases inventory management efficiencies.
“Zebra’s Enterprise Asset Intelligence solutions provide retailers with visibility and actionable information about their customers, inventory and other valued assets from the point of sale to the distribution center and beyond. With the more efficient RFID inventory system, Bon-Ton now knows with certainty that all available merchandise is on display to help increase sales and improve the customer experience,” stated.
While the use of RFID is not new in retail, it is an important tool for cutting costs and managing efficiencies at a time when retailers are battling fiercely for each consumer dollar spent at their stores. By reducing out of stocks and overstocks, retailers can help maximize product availability to help convert sales.
Inventory management using fixed RFID readers provides accurate, real-time inventory data, which benefits retailers in terms of revenue and gross profit uplift, shrinkage and more. This is why many retailers are implementing an item-level tagging RFID solution for inventory tracking.