Retail

The role digital signage plays in improving the customer experience in convenience stores

As c-stores increasingly embrace digital signage, commercial display providers in this sector continually innovate, offering advanced software solutions for monitoring, including dedicated cloud services and robust support.

Photo: Generated by AI. Adobe Stock.

April 22, 2025 by Tom Bingham — Senior Director, LG Electronics USA

New and innovative digital signage solutions and services are helping leading convenience stores to drive foot traffic and profits, adding value and refining the customer experience.

With a market value exceeding $40 billion and poised for further growth across the U.S., c-stores are increasingly becoming the go-to destination for consumers seeking convenient, one-stop-shops for fuel, groceries and more. Larger stores such as Buc-ee's — now expanding further afield from its Texas base — are even offering higher value items such as phone accessories and small kitchen appliances.

Transforming sector

C-stores are undergoing a significant transformation, evolving over the last five to 10 years into a roadside or out-of-town version of 7-Eleven, but with a much larger footprint. They're moving away from the typical outlets of the past that tend to only sell items such as cigarettes, beer and chips, alongside gas.

Now, in addition to picking up a much wider array of groceries, customers can park and grab lunch, encouraged to linger and spend, thanks in part to digital signage at the pumps and throughout the stores, both inside and out. This shift enhances the customer journey, improves customer satisfaction, and drives higher profit margins for the stores.

C-store owners recognize that surviving on gas sales alone — yielding only a few cents per dollar — isn't sustainable, they need to entice customers to spend on higher-margin in-store items. This means drawing customers away from the gas pumps and encouraging them to park, come inside, shop, and perhaps even sit down to eat.

Planting seeds

Our approach, from a display perspective, is to first consider how to entice customers by planting seeds at the gas pump with digital signage or digital information. Small "Pump Topper" LED screens at the gas pumps are the starting point — the frontline, so to speak. These high-brightness displays run ads pushing offers on branded sodas, candies or snacks with ads changing as often as every 10 seconds.

Depending on the time of day, convenience stores can also run targeted campaigns for breakfast, lunch or dinner specials, encouraging customers to go inside. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, c-stores sell about 80% of fuel in the entire country, and 44% of those customers go inside, with just over one-third making a purchase — creating a major opportunity to boost sales.

According to AdExchanger, Walmart generated $2 billion in advertising dollars in 2022 and 2023 from these vendor ads. C-stores are looking at this, and can see the obvious benefits, especially when you consider that some may have even more locations countrywide than Walmart. This market is going to continue to grow, and analysts predict the c-store market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.78% between 2023-2028 increasing by $930 billion.

Innovative solutions

There's room for improvement with signage inside and outside of the store, and digital display innovations can drive profits even higher for c-stores. Leading manufacturers, like LG which offers commercial LED displays from 9-inches to 55-inches, are working with integration partners to place these strategically around c-stores. Digital Pump Toppers are just the starting point, but they are key to the success of c-stores, and we're looking at ways of adding value into this forecourt area, with larger, more visible displays.

Before Pump Toppers, c-stores had to pay somebody to swap out old-school, static paper posters monthly — hardly agile, and also expensive to facilitate. While these Pump Toppers are becoming more ubiquitous and sought after. It's likely we'll start to see larger — 22- or 27-inch touchscreen displays — integrated directly into the pumps, which will be even more enticing to customers and help to increase in store traffic even further.

Additional advertising

Before customers head into the store, outdoor-facing high-brightness displays fitted against the store window can provide additional advertising and enticement. This further impression made on the customer has the potential to lead to an additional sale — for instance, an ad for soda or a pizza slice could plant a seed in the customer's head before they even step through the door.

And further innovations are already here with transparent LED film that can be affixed to surfaces such as windows. The film features 14mm pixel pitch, 4,000 nits of brightness, 53% transparency, and can curve up to 2,000R for flexible use on curved glass. It's also self-adhesive — meaning it is easy to apply, can be trimmed to fit most surfaces, and can transform any C Store window or building facade into a dynamic display.

Menu boards

And once inside, other displays, situated strategically to grab the customer's eye on his or her customer journey, will again plant these purchase seeds. If the c-store sells lunch, a full menu board — possibly as many as three or four screens — can help not only to encourage lunchtime purchases, but also up-sells from vendor ads. Many quick-serve restaurants now use self-service kiosks for ordering, and this is something that c-stores may consider — installing strategically-placed units to reduce staff costs and free-up staff to roam the store and offer assistance – which could also drive sales and increase revenues.

As c-stores increasingly embrace digital signage, commercial display providers in this sector continually innovate, offering advanced software solutions for monitoring, including dedicated cloud services and robust support. Double-sided landscape or portrait displays for gas pumps are also being explored in collaboration with fuel companies to further enhance customer engagement.

New ecosystems

The future of LED displays in c-stores (and beyond) is bolstered by flexible and innovative mounting options, allowing for the most seamless user experience possible. Intelligent heat sensor solutions are another up-and-coming development.

These use a variety of inexpensive, ceiling-mounted sensors throughout the store to take a heat map of where customers are moving, using cell phone signals rather than cameras (which bring privacy issues into play, and are more expensive to buy and install), to collate data and establish best-positioning for displays and their advertising, and to develop intelligent sales strategies for placement of goods. Approximately four ceiling mounted devices are required for a 3,000 square-foot space, and typically c-stores are between 2,000-3,000 square feet.

Finally, with price points gradually coming down for giant-screen DVLED displays, it's even possible that, in the future, you might see the sort of huge, high-contrast, high-detail displays that locations such as malls deploy within c-stores. These may wrap around the whole store, with ticker-tape style advertising running around the walls to further drive sales and increase advertising revenue.

The future of convenience stores is certainly very bright, with customer traffic and profits set to soar, and this encouraging future will be supported by increased deployment of bright, large and intelligent digital displays.

About Tom Bingham

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Tom Bingham is senior director of vertical market sales at LG Electronics USA, a leading provider of digital signage solutions for convenience stores.

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