Our expert: Gergő Nidermayer, the head of ENDORIENCE and EKI Creative
One of the economic sectors that has “suffered” the most significant transformation because of the COVID Crisis is the POS tool market. The point-of-sale promotion market is trying to forge new paths because the reopening is starting to show that a significant portion of shoppers feels comfortable in the online space; they have turned away from stores that offer a lower-quality shopping experience, but many are actually looking forward to being able to go shopping, look around, and ask questions in person since we humans are social creatures. Whether there will be fewer, more, or even the same amount of shoppers at service locations, one thing is sure: it will not be enough to try and win them over with the same “experience” as the one offered by companies before the crisis.
POS tools becoming premium products
Point-of-sale marketing has had quite a varied career in the business world. It has always been and continues to be ever-present since the effect that last-second impressions can have on shoppers is unquestionable. Of course, this can be done in intelligent ways, and less-than-clever ways. However, before we throw the first stone, we need to consider that every direction is viable under certain conditions. The POS sector has undergone significant development over the last 7-8 years, which is primarily due to the rapid development of design and technology. This speed is forcing competing companies to struggle against each other intensely; whoever can provide the higher-quality experience to their shoppers will be the last one standing. This trend has transformed the role of POS over the past few years, and from its position as a simple in-store persuasion tool, it has started drifting towards the “premium” direction, where the aim is no longer to lure the money out of the pockets of customers with direct tools but to create a “good mood” for a potential or existing clientele and ensure their loyalty. More and more large corporations are investing significant sums into POS development at their sales locations and even at their service locations or sites important from the point of view of representation. “This process has been going on for nearly a decade. Increasingly, orders focus on the design and implementation of the reception area or meeting room of a world-class office building. In fact, even in the case of traditional points of sale, companies are requesting high-quality designs in significant quantities. Over the past 4-5 years, solutions that use IT-audio technology at the point of sale have clearly entered the limelight. This demand from market players is arising due to two almost completely opposite factors: absolute mass versus true premium. Therefore, companies operating in our market have to decide which one they wish and are able to represent since these two aspects cannot effectively work together for long”, said Gergő Nidermayer, head of EKI Creative and ENDORIENCE. This means that this process was observable even before the pandemic; therefore, it is even more interesting how it affected the future of the market in the past year, interspersed with longer and shorter breaks. Furthermore, paying customers have also undergone a significant level of polarisation during this period. Many experts have stated that the rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer. If we translate this process into the language of purchasing power, then the gap between the “masses” and the “premium” categories has indeed become wider as well.