Kroger Digital
Shelf Tags
Pilot
Researcher and UI/UX Designer for scan coordinator, the store associate/end-user management of tags and signs utilizing third-party solutions and Telxon technologies to design Zebra technology solutions to reduce shrink and related labor variances.
Year
2024 - 2025
Client
Kroger
Research Objectives
In major grocery retail environments, paper signs and tags are a high-priority task to meet customer needs and support competitive pricing. Scan coordinators oversee the whole-store setup of signs and tags, including third-party vendor solutions and services, to handle daily sign and tag operations and troubleshoot erroneous shipments.
Research teams collaborated with business owners and in-store execution teams to develop low-fidelity pilot solutions for deployment across the Mid-Atlantic and Cincinnati divisions. These teams gathered and organized qualitative research alongside data streams to enhance metrics related to store shrinkage, savings, and competitor analysis.
Our objective was to equip scan coordinators with solutions that reduce shrinkage and labor variances, thereby effectively supporting customer needs while ensuring competitive pricing and the customer satisfaction guarantee.
Outcomes
The initial UI/UX solutions deployed to both the Mid-Atlantic and Cincinnati divisions expanded to Beta releases as part of an iterative testing phase. This phase aims to assess the technical feasibility and analyze competitors in relation to the hardware solutions.
Kroger expects to save tens of thousands of labor hours and reduce paper waste across its network each year. This increased efficiency will allow the company to reassign employees to more valuable tasks, such as customer service and shelf restocking. It may also reduce overall labor costs at the store level and support the company's zero-waste initiatives.
Key Findings
Scan coordinators needed extra staff to manage the high turnover of signs, tags, and displays for promotional events. To ensure compliance with standards, users relied on outdated technology and services to fulfill their daily responsibilities. This included user flows that required enhancements for Telxon technology, an IoT stream that led to increased paper shrinkage, and recurring issues with third-party pre-printed solutions.
(projected outcomes, not actual)"It takes the entire shift to switch the tags on ad sales changeover day."
— Scan Coordinator