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How ESL Devices Transform into Connected Label Solutions: A Perspective of Actor Interaction and
Information Rebundling

Third-party collaborations to develop and innovate ESL gain much attention from digital
service providers. Other third-party complementors, such as the application developer
community, also join the ecosystem to create some mobile and website applications. For
instance, ESL system integrators provide access to the developer community to connect

retailers with other third-party complementors in developing the platform.
Now equipped and integrated with digital platforms and other computing services,
ESL has become more sophisticated. Consequently, its features can help enhance the

customer in-store experience, as mentioned by Wouter Kolk, CEO of Adolf Delhaize
Europe & Indonesia: “The digital applications we will develop through this partnership
will enhance the customer experience in our stores and allow us to operate more
efficiently” (Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V., 2019b).
ESL can collect individual organizations from various industries with different

expertise to explore and extend joint-venture solutions for ESL. Innovation labs,
established by other actors, provide a future application for ESL. In this case, the
enterprise-wide transformation happens inside and outside the organizations. Inside the

organizations, the interdependent relationship has transferred the knowledge and expertise
of each actor to the new business, removing some barriers to this challenge. Outside the
organization, the co-creation process could be seen as a step ahead in transforming retail
ecosystems by connecting actors from new domains and enlarging the collaboration
network in the retail ecosystem, including establishing innovation labs.

From the inside and outside, transforming retail ecosystems can handle dynamic
pricing for ESL by considering product expiration dates or inventory levels. ESL is now
integrated with mobile and web application platforms to enhance customer experiences.

A physical store, a rich source of contacts and customer interactions, can be combined
with other electronic commerce, providing a new customer behavior to connect online
and offline. Showrooming and webrooming customer behavior emerge due to the
integration between online and offline retail environments. Webrooming is the customer
behavior practice of researching products online before purchasing them in a physical

store. Oppositely, showrooming is the consumer behavior characterized by researching
products offline before purchasing them in the online store (Mukherjee and Chatterjee,
2021; Verhoef, Kannan, and Inman, 2015). Integrating the online and offline (physical

stores) requires retailers to restructure their business and organization and reshape the

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