Case Study: Medicine Shoppe Canada Uses Digital Signage to Engage Shoppers, Drive Sales

PROBLEM: Medicine Shoppe Canada (MSC), a network of owner-operated pharmacies with over 150 stores in nine provinces across Canada, wanted to better spread its brand message in its stores.

SOLUTION: Contracted with a community-based digital signage network provider.

RESULTS: While unable to quantify its monetary effect on its business as of yet — MSC launched the service in May of last year — digital signage has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from MSC's customers and store owners alike, as well as enhanced the overall value of the service and offerings MSC provides.

Seeking to bring location marketing to a hyper-local level, retailers have begun to embrace digital signage as an effective tool at their disposal. Consider the following: ABI Research, a market intelligence company, recently found that the overall market for digital signage software, hardware, installation and management services in the U.S. alone will more than double from $641 million in 2008 to $1.4 billion in 2013.

MSC is one of those retailers that viewed digital signage as an opportunity to better spread its brand message in its stores, while also entertaining, informing and capturing customers. Starting in May of last year, MSC launched a digital signage network in a third of its stores across Canada. (The network is now a manda-
tory part of MSC's system, so any new stores opening will be equipped with digital signage.)

"We feel that digital signage will help us get peoples' attention a little bit more, and at the same time they can figure out who we are, what we're about and what offers we have," says Jon Johnson, MSC's director of operations and training.

MSC worked with ScreenScape Networks, a community-based digital signage network provider, to get its digital signage network up and running. Content for the digital signage is customized to each individual store, but some mix of educational, entertainment and promotional programing is commonplace. In fact, MSC suggests content to its store owners that's consistent for all locations — e.g., health-related information, the brand's TV commercials, etc.

Branding First, Sales Follow
While not launched as a sales driver, MSC hopes that digital signage will evolve into that role as time progresses.

"We're beginning to drive sales with it [digital signage] by showing that we can provide a higher level of care and a higher level of programs for people afflicted with diseases or those who need better prescription care," notes Johnson.

A pharmacy is ideal for promotional-based digital signage advertising that influences consumer behavior at the point of sale, says Mark Hemphill, founder and chief product officer of ScreenScape Networks. For example, digitizing a store flier is one way that MSC could drum up sales via digital signage. And the more local and relevant the content displayed is, the better the chance of it having a positive effect.

"I think that the long-term promise of this whole medium is to execute the content on a hyper-local level," says Hemphill of digital signage's appeal. "Literally factor in the context of the situation. For example, each time someone enters your store, your local newspaper should be used instead of CNN because it speaks on a more local level to that audience ... it's more likely to sell your products as well because it's seen as a value-add and worthwhile to be looking at in the first place."

As one of the early adopters of community-based digital signage, MSC figures to be a step ahead of its competition because of the added value the service brings to the in-store shopping experience. Its customers have already voiced their approval of digital signage, now it's only a matter of time before their wallets do their talking for them.