Restaurants and retailers frequently use point of sale marketing tactics to encourage customers to make last-minute purchases. However, because retailers resell other business’ products, point of sale marketing is significant to every company that sells items located at/near a retailer’s POS.

Grocery stores commonly place merchandise shelving in between each available register, featuring items such as magazines, candy, gum, and batteries. Sodas are often displayed in a small refrigeration unit at the end of these displays. Items near the POS frequently move at one-and-a-half to three times as fast as the same product on a shelf elsewhere in the store, and some items in high-traffic supermarkets have been reported to sell as much as 64 times faster.

  • Gas stations similarly line products at their register counter. Here, energy vitamins and beef jerky are items added to those also commonly sold at grocery store registers.

 

  • Fast-food restaurants commonly display desserts and gift cards at their POS. Dine-in restaurants in which customers pay at the counter instead of through their server (such as Denny’s and Sizzler) may also feature items here.
  • Retail businesses, including hardware stores, auto parts stores, hobby stores, and others place their own low-ticket items around their checkout locations.
  • Tobacco companies focus much of their advertising around the point of sale; although their displays and advertisements are subject to more legal regulations than other products.
  • Brands can purchase display space at a retailer’s POS, or even use the POS system software to promote their product. For example, Hellman’s designed a program that printed recipes featuring Hellman’s mayonnaise (and other products purchased at the same time) on customers’ receipts, which led to an increase in sales as customers put their mayonnaise to further use.
  • Starbucks is a particularly good example of POS marketing, insofar as they have low-ticket merchandise on display there, a POS software that facilitates suggestive selling, and a receipt program that encourages repeat business.
  • Non-profit organizations and causes can sell paper plaques (also called pinups, icons, or mobiles) at the point of sale, which visually represent a donation made, and offer the customer a social reward for donating (such as putting the donator’s name on display).