The Best (& Worst) Things To Show On Grocery Store TVs

TVs in grocery stores play a significant role in impacting the average customer experience. With the right content playing on the television screen, grocery store owners can communicate desired messages and tailor the customer experience to attain maximum customer satisfaction.

However, it isn’t enough to simply place TV sets strategically inside your grocery store. To maximize your grocery store TV, you need to ensure you display the right kind of content. In this article, we will explore the best and worst things to show on grocery store TVs.

Grocery Stores And TVs: The Overview

TV sets in a grocery store are a relatively new idea due to the advent of technology and modern commercial operations. In the traditional grocery store setting, you will find stocked shelves and music playing in the background from a radio but never a TV screen meant solely for the shoppers' consumption.

Although grocery stores have been around for a long time, they are still undergoing an evolution that involves implementing new practices to switch the aim to rake in more revenue through better customer experience.

The first-ever grocery store was an establishment named Piggly Wiggly in Tennessee. It was established in 1916 from a self-service concept created by Clarence Saunders that allowed consumers to stroll the aisles of the supermarket and pick out their goods.

Before this commercial development, shoppers often hand over their hand-written lists to the grocery store. It was the clerk’s duty to fetch the goods in an uncomfortable process that featured outrageously long queues and even longer waiting times.

Since then, grocery stores have come a long way. In the century that followed the establishment of the first grocery store, the grocery store business witnessed new upgrades that helped to streamline the operations and improve customer satisfaction.

First came the creation of drive-in markets. This was followed by the introduction of shopping carts in 1937, the popularity of coupons in the 1950s, and other major improvements in the shopping scene.

Since then, the grocery store has adapted to the modern setting and become a core part of society.

Grocery stores, a part of the retail food industry, contribute significantly to a nation’s economy. In the US alone, retail and supermarket store sales reached $742 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. This accounted for nearly 86% of the U.S. food and beverage retail market.

This isn’t all, as the grocery store business is expected to grow and expand. Research shows that the grocery business is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.0% from 2022 to 2030.

This continuous expansion of the grocery store business can be attributed to its extension past the original retail offering it was expected to provide. Since the creation of the first grocery store more than 100 years ago, grocery store owners have continued to explore options that allowed them to leverage their operations to harness a chance to increase customer traffic and revenue.

Strangely, one of these processes involved implementing television sets into their establishments. The onset of technology has provided assets for grocery stores to implement into their businesses. First came the use of radios to play background music and advertisement jingles. Then came the use of retail technology networks.

The use of television sets in grocery stores was notably popular in the 1970s when grocery store retailers used their television sets to display pre-recorded adverts and informational content to entertain and educate shoppers.

Now, TV sets in grocery stores have evolved to do more than inform and entertain, helping grocery store owners create a better shopping experience that will yield better sales and revenue.

Benefits Of Having TVs In A Grocery Store

TVs in grocery stores have various benefits that help a grocery store become more successful by wielding the power of eye-catching content and using it to increase traffic, sales, and customer satisfaction.

TVs in a grocery store are an atmospheric feature designed to provide positive stimuli that will affect a customer’s shopping behavior. The use of a television set offers a chance for grocery store owners to alter the shopping environment with specific content.

With the power to educate, entertain, and inform the shoppers using different content, grocery store owners can influence customer decisions in favor of their brands. Two major benefits of having TVs in a grocery store include:

1. Visual Entertainment

Visual entertainment is an often-overlooked factor in a grocery store’s setting. Admittedly, people enter grocery stores with the sole purpose and objective of making purchases. However, entertainment makes the whole shopping experience better, providing satisfaction customers cannot enjoy in grocery stores without TV sets.

A TV set in a grocery store positively elevates the store’s brand image. In-store television is an element of in-store atmospherics that creates a positive shopping atmosphere and alters the overall store image.

Imagine walking into a store, and you are immediately confronted by a screen bearing attractive and eye-catching content. This wow-factor induces a positive impression that immediately causes you to favor the grocery store over other stores without TVs.

Additionally, it helps when you have something fun to enjoy as you walk down the aisle and go about your shopping. This visual stimulation keeps customers fixated, promoting patience and encouraging a more immersive customer experience.

Since grocery store queues can also grow long, causing people to wait uncomfortably, televisions provide engagement that drastically reduces a customer’s perceived wait time. By enhancing the viewing experience through sensory stimulation, you can keep your customers engaged and entertained until they walk out the door.

2. Better Marketing

Televisions are not only useful for entertaining your clients but also for informing and encouraging them to make more purchases. This is possible through subtle in-store marketing.

TVs are great marketing tools since they provide a medium for grocery tote owners to display engaging marketing content in a way that posters and flyers cannot. By displaying certain content types on TV screens placed strategically in your establishment, you can package products convincingly that encourages clients to make purchases.

Marketing your product in your grocery store TV not only shows your customers product details but provides a platform to show them why these products are a necessity. With televisions, you can perform visual advertisements to promote products in your grocery store.

With in-store TVs, you can also communicate time-sensitive offers in real-time. This will ensure your customers remain updated on ongoing promotions.

The Best & Worst Things To Show On Grocery TV

Getting a TV installed in your grocery store is only half the job. The other half involves figuring out the right type of content to display on your TV.

Grocery stores are public places frequented by people from different demographics. Although everybody watches TV today, not everyone has the same taste in TV content.

Since the content displayed on your grocery store TV is solely meant for customer consumption, it is essential only to display content that your customers will find palatable.

To do this, you must find common ground in content that people have similar interests in. This means you have to find entertaining and engaging content that is neither offensive nor restricted to a limited demographic.

Some contents are great for in-store display, and some still yield negative effects when shown in a grocery store.

The Best Things To Show On Grocery Store TV

The best grocery store TV contents are entertaining, engaging, and significantly improves customer satisfaction and experience. Some of these include:

1. Music Videos

Everybody loves music. Whether it is playing in their headphones or the car as they drive down to the grocery store, it is inarguably that music is an innate part of everyone's lifestyle.

Grocery stores have since integrated music as an in-store tool to improve the average customer experience. With the right music playing in the background, people have a more pleasant shopping experience, leading to better sales and more revenue.

Research has also established a connection between music and the consumer. Music influences customer behavior by creating physiological arousal that impacts a person's emotions and, ultimately, purchasing decisions.

Essentially, music can be used as a great sales tool by altering the grocery store atmosphere. However, music videos yield even better advantages for the average shopper.

Music videos create auditory and visual stimulation that affects a customer’s emotion. The combined effects of music videos capture the heart and minds of shoppers, helping them settle into a better shopping atmosphere that encourages them to shop more.

In addition, music videos are especially captivating to the younger demographic. Having a television set that shows trendy music videos makes your grocery store more attractive to the younger millennial and Gen Z generation.

Music videos keep customers engaged as they shop or wait in line to be attended to at the counter. It provides something to keep them fill engaged, drastically reducing perceived wait times and leaving customers satisfied.

Understandably, not all types of music are fit for general consumption. Thankfully, some services allow you to filter your songs and select the most suitable ones to display. Loop TV is one such service.

Loop TV provides a playlist feature that allows curating a customized music video playlist. This way, you have control over what music video is being displayed.

Loop TV also makes it possible to schedule several playlists so you can automatically set a playlist to play during a particular point in the day.

2. Movie Trailers

Movie trailers are exciting. These short videos are captivating, entertaining, and a great way to keep customers engaged as they wait in the grocery store.

Movie trailers are a better alternative than showing movies in grocery stores. Although many grocery stores display movies to keep their walk-in customers engaged as they shop, this alternative often proves to be a distraction, especially for the grocery store staff.

An interesting movie seems harmless until grocery store staff members can do nothing but focus on the scenes playing out in front of them. It's all fun and games until a staff member is so engrossed in the movie they picked out that they forget to stock the shelves, mess up the checkout, or fail to carry out their duties.

Movie trailers are a better alternative because while they are gripping, they are positively short.

3. News

Although not everyone is interested in reading newspapers, many people still want to know what is happening in society, country, or the world.

Showing the news on grocery store TV is a means of infotainment that educates and entertains customers. It keeps them busy as they complete their shopping but not in a baseless way but in a way that helps them become more aware of a situation when they leave than when they first walked into your grocery store.

4. Weather Reports

“How about this weather?”

The weather is not just an excuse to make small talk between cashiers and customers at the checkout counter. The weather can also have a significant impact on shopping behavior.

Weather forecasts are a way to provide warnings to customers. Sometimes, people forget to check the weather forecast for the day, and in cases like this, your grocery store TV can be used as a welcome wake-up call.

Weather reports are also an indirect means of advertisement. When customers see what weather to expect, they are encouraged to make impulse purchases to ensure their comfort in the coming weather.

For example, if the weather forecast predicts a coming storm, customers will impulsively purchase items like hot cocoa and other products they might need during the storm.

5. Digital Signage

Digital signage is probably the single most important use of grocery store TVs. It provides a medium to captivate shoppers using eye-catching images and attention-grabbing texts.

Digital signage provides rich imagery on high-resolution displays, making it possible to tailor, transform, and personalize the customer experience.

Connecting your digital signage to your TV screen(s) allows you to leverage compelling content to improve sales. With digital signage, you can upsell products, provide entertainment, streamline in-store employee communication, foster customer relationships by displaying real-time promotional offers, and lots more.

Some clever ways to use digital signage in your grocery store include:

• Display employee of the month information to motivate employees.
• Create digital menu boards for products.
• Create aisle/shelf-edge displays to modernize your grocery store and improve the customer shopping experience.
• Create point-of-sale displays.
• Customize entertaining content.

Loop TV provides a medium to do these and lots more. With over 145 licensed channels for music videos, action sports, and news channels, among others, coupled with unique and sophisticated digital signage features, you can create an in-store experience that beats your imagination.

Worst Things To Show In A Grocery Stores

No matter how you cut it, some contents just do not belong in grocery stores. Some of these include:

1. Adult Content

A grocery store is a public area that isn't restricted to adult use. People of all ages frequent grocery stores, with the younger demographic visiting with or without adult supervision.

Due to the diverse customer demographic and the sole objective of grocery stores, adult content should not be plated in the store. Showing adult content will not only be morally unacceptable but also scare off your clients. Stick to playing general content suitable for a wider demographic.

2. Religious Content

Religious content can be controversial. This is especially because people have different views on religion.

Due to these differences, it is a bad idea to display religious content that might cause tension in the atmosphere. Completely avoid displaying religious content and focus on more generally accepted content.

Using Loop TV In Your Grocery Store

Loop TV is a business entertainment and digital signage TV. It combines professionally curated entertainment channels and unique digital signage features to provide a service that ensures the ultimate customer experience.

With Loop TV, you can bring engaging entertainment content to your grocery store and customize the customer experience to ensure customer satisfaction.

Loop TV is free, meaning you do not have to worry about subscription or licensing fees. All services, including the media player, come free.

Additionally, Loop TV supports businesses that use their content. You get to enjoy premium entertainment while earning monthly rewards such as cash, prepaid Visa cards, gift cards or even charitable donations.

To get started, request a free media player on the official Loop TV website.