Case study · Grocery retail

Digital signage in a supermarket:
the Intermarché Juvignac case study

About twenty screens, installed since 2019 in a store near Montpellier, in southern France. Here is what was fitted, where the screens went, what they show through the week, and how much time the store team actually spends on them.

The rollout

One store, about twenty screens, six years of hindsight

Intermarché logo

Intermarché Super, Juvignac

Grocery retail · Hérault, France
An EMITY customer since 2019

The Intermarché store in Juvignac, on the edge of Montpellier in southern France, was fitted in 2019. It now runs about twenty screens, spread across the aisles, the fresh food counters, the checkout area, the drive-through and the service station. All of them are driven from E-MANAGER, the dashboard the store opens in a web browser.

The store sits about fifteen minutes from EMITY’s head office in Jacou. That proximity mattered when the screen positions were chosen: they were picked on site, aisle by aisle, rather than on a floor plan.

~20

screens installed across the store

2019

year the store went live

1

player can drive several screens

15

minutes from the EMITY head office

Before the screens

What the store spent its time printing, trimming and putting up

In grocery retail, prices and offers change every week. Before the screens, the Juvignac store worked with paper — and paper meant a print run, a trim and a walk down the aisle, every single time. Three situations kept coming back.

The poster went up after the offer started

A promotion starts on Wednesday. The poster, though, gets printed, trimmed and put up whenever the aisle team finds a moment — sometimes Friday. Two days of an offer that nobody announced.

And it stayed up after the offer ended

The mirror image costs even more: the poster for a finished promotion is still on the shelf. A customer reads it, reaches the checkout, and the disappointment gets settled at the service desk.

Practical notices change within the day

A change of opening hours, an aisle closed while a delivery comes in, a self-checkout out of service: none of that can wait for a trip to the print shop.

The installation

Three parts, and nothing to install on the store’s computers

The store had no software to install on its machines: the platform opens in a browser, from the back office or from a phone.

Screens where people already slow down

Commercial-grade screens were placed where customers already pause: the end of aisles, the fresh food counters, the checkout line, and out as far as the drive-through and the service station. The store started with the busiest spots, then extended aisle by aisle.

One player for several screens

The E-BOX player reads the content and feeds the screen. A single player can drive several of them, so there is no need for one box per panel. And if the internet connection drops, playback carries on: the content is already stored locally.

A single place to run everything

E-MANAGER brings the screens, the content and the scheduling together in one web dashboard. Visuals are built in EMITY’s built-in editor — and, if your teams already work with them, Canva and Adobe Express plug in as well.

What happens when the connection drops

A store rarely has a solid network signal all the way to the back of the aisles. Scheduled content is therefore held inside the player: if the link goes down, the screens keep showing what was planned. Updates resume on their own as soon as the connection is back, with nobody walking the floor.

On the floor

Four positions, four different messages

A screen in the aisle does not say the same thing as a screen at the drive-through. The position decides the content, and the scheduling does the rest.

Two screens showing the same offer at the end of a supermarket aisle

The weekly offer, down the aisle

At the end of a shelving run, the screen carries the offer that is live. When it changes, it changes on every screen at once — without a single poster being put up.

Aisle screens

Digital signage totem on a pillar facing the checkout lanes of a supermarket

Waiting time, put to use

The wait does not get shorter, but it passes differently: what the store offers, home delivery, click-and-collect opening hours. This is also where a customer decides on the next visit.

Checkout area

Outdoor digital signage totem at a supermarket drive-through collection point

At the drive-through, the order on its way

The totem greets the customer in the collection bay and confirms that the order is being picked. A wait that is announced is easier to bear than a silent one.

Drive-through

Digital signage screen under the canopy of a supermarket service station

At the service station, the store carries on

Filling up takes three minutes: the screen under the canopy slips in the offer of the week, a few steps from the store entrance.

Service station

Day to day

What the store team actually gains

The benefit is not measured in bold claims. It is counted in small chores that drop out of the week.

The offer shows on the day it starts

Scheduling is set in advance, with a start date and an end date. The screen switches over on its own at the right moment, and drops the finished offer without anyone having to remember.

A visual gets built without a designer

EMITY’s built-in editor offers templates to fill in: a headline, a photo, a price. Someone on the store team builds the visual and publishes it straight away.

An urgent notice goes out in minutes

An aisle closed for a delivery, opening hours changed for a public holiday: the message leaves the back office and lands on the screens concerned, without a walk down the aisle.

The team finds out at the same time as the customers

A screen in the stockroom or the break room carries the briefings, the delivery schedule and the operations coming up. Same platform, a different group of screens.

Step by step

From the first visit to the first broadcast

1

A walk round, aisle by aisle

The EMITY engineering team walks the store and notes, aisle by aisle, where customers already stop and look. That walk decides how many screens are needed, in which format and at what height.

2

Fitting and wiring

Screens mounted, players wired, power and network checked. The screens are then registered in the platform and grouped by zone: aisles, fresh food, checkouts, drive-through, service station.

3

Handover, in one session

Someone on the store team learns to build a visual, schedule it and send it to a group of screens. The rest is picked up by doing, with the EMITY team on hand.

4

The first week on air

The first schedules are laid out in advance across the whole week. The store then tunes the display durations against what it sees happening in the aisles.

Screen in the staff break room of a supermarket showing the delivery schedule

One platform, groups of screens

Everything is scheduled from E-MANAGER: the list of the store’s screens, their status, what is playing and the calendar for the weeks ahead. The screens are handled in groups, which is what makes the break room screen no harder to run than the twenty on the sales floor. A store with twenty screens works in the same interface as a chain running a thousand.

  • ✓Groups of screens by zone: aisles, fresh food, checkouts, drive-through
  • ✓Scheduling set in advance, with start and end dates
  • ✓The status of every screen, visible from the back office
  • ✓The same content reused from one week to the next

The questions that keep coming up

What stores ask before they fit screens

The Juvignac store runs about twenty, but the number depends mostly on floor area and on which zones you want to cover. Most stores start with three positions — the entrance, one aisle end and the checkout area — then extend aisle by aisle. With EMITY, one account handles anything from 1 to 1,000 screens, and moving from one to the other changes nothing about the way you work.

Someone on the store team, in most cases. EMITY’s built-in editor offers templates to fill in: a headline, a photo, a price, a display duration. No software to install, no export to manage. If your teams already work with Canva or Adobe Express, those tools connect to the platform as well.

No. One E-BOX player can drive several screens, which is how Juvignac is set up. And on a recent commercial screen, the E-SOFT app installs directly on the panel itself: no player at all. The choice is made during the walk round, based on the screens already in place.

Playback carries on. Scheduled content is stored locally, so a screen keeps showing what was planned even with no network. As soon as the connection returns, pending updates go through on their own, with nobody walking the floor.

Yes, in the large majority of cases. EMITY supports screens from every manufacturer, so a mixed estate built up over the years can be taken on as it stands. An estate already driven by another platform can be taken over too.

Most of the work happens once: building the visuals and laying out the week’s schedule, in a single sitting. After that the screens switch over on their own at the planned times. What is left is the occasional one-off message — a change of hours, an aisle closed for a while.

Screens are grouped by store and by zone. A promotion is then pushed to a whole group — every entrance screen across a chain, for instance — instead of screen by screen. Each store keeps control of its own local content.

The price depends on the number of screens and on the subscription you pick — Standard, Premium or Excellence, the last of which unlocks the widgets and interactive signage. The detail is on the subscriptions page, and a trial account lets you test before deciding.

Going further

Three pages that go with this case study

Digital signage in supermarkets

Digital signage in supermarkets

The wider picture: what a screen changes in a large store, which content works in the aisles and where to place it.

Digital signage for shops and chains

Digital signage for shops and chains

Six moments worth a screen, from the window to the stockroom, and how to push one piece of content to thirty stores at once.

All EMITY customer cases

All EMITY customer cases

Documented references across sectors, from a single kiosk in a town hall to hundreds of screens on a logistics site.

Three screens to begin with, the rest afterwards

Juvignac started with the busiest spots, then extended aisle by aisle. The starting point is the same for everyone: a demonstration built around your own store, with no commitment.