The price a store displays — on a paper sign, on a shelf label or on a screen — binds the store. Brazil's Consumer Protection Code says that sufficiently precise information or advertising conveyed by any form or means binds the supplier and becomes part of the contract (article 30); if performance is refused, the consumer may demand the offer as advertised (article 35, item I). Swapping paper for a screen fixes the speed of the correction, not the obligation. And there is a distinction almost every recommendation ignores: an ERP-integrated price board and a content Indoor TV are different products — the first changes the price along with the checkout, the second is published by a person. One limit does not depend on your choice: in a supermarket, price information must sit next to the items on display (Law 10.962/2004, article 2) and be visually attached to the product with no obstruction in between (Decree 5.903/2006, article 2, paragraph 1, item III). The screen does not replace the label.
The scene: the promotion ended, the sign stayed
In the Café & Tech episode behind this article, the subject comes up in passing, in thirty seconds, in the middle of a conversation about supermarket operations: the legal angle, an outdated price, the promotion that ended while a sign someone forgot still shows a different number — and how much the speed of the correction matters.
The episode moves on. Enforcement does not. In September 2026, a supermarket chain in Formiga, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, was fined R$ 423,727.85 by the consumer protection body of the State Public Prosecutor's Office, through the 3rd Consumer Protection Prosecution Office of the district, after inspectors found divergence between the price displayed on the shelf and the price registered in the store's optical scanners. According to the press that covered the case — among others, Diário do Comércio, on 16 September 2026 — the notice also listed products without the total cash price, no signage indicating where the optical scanners are, and no floor plan of the sales area. The decision is still subject to appeal.
Three things in that case matter to anyone running screens in a store. First: what triggered the fine was not overcharging a specific customer — it was the divergence itself, found in a routine inspection. Second: the other items in the notice (scanner signage, floor plan) come from the same decree that governs shelf pricing, and almost nobody knows them. Third: the amount did not come from a digital signage price list — it came from the quality of price information across the whole store.
What the law says, in three sentences
Anyone running price communication in Brazilian retail works with three provisions, and it is worth reading them literally once.
- An offer binds. Under article 30 of the Consumer Protection Code, all sufficiently precise information or advertising, conveyed by any form or means of communication regarding products and services, binds the supplier who conveys it or relies on it and becomes part of the contract to be entered into.
- Information must be correct and conspicuous. Article 31 requires offers to provide correct, clear, precise and conspicuous information, in Portuguese, about characteristics, quality, quantity, composition, price, warranty, expiry dates and origin. That was the article behind the Formiga notice.
- The consumer can enforce it. Under article 35, item I, if performance is refused, the consumer may demand enforced performance of the obligation under the terms of the offer.
Why paper fails (and what the screen really fixes)
The paper sign is not a villain: it is a technology that solved its era's problem well and aged alongside the frequency of price changes. The sign-writer trade exists in Brazil precisely because promotions change in the morning and again in the afternoon, and somebody has to write that by hand, store by store.
Paper fails structurally, not because of who makes it:
- Correcting requires physically walking there. Price changed in the system? Someone has to reach the shelf, in every store of the chain, to swap the sign.
- Removal has no owner. Putting a sign up is a scheduled task; taking it down rarely is. That is where the forgotten sign comes from.
- Visual clutter hides what matters. Five hundred signs competing with each other make the customer stop reading all of them, including the correct one.
The screen fixes exactly one of those three problems, and it fixes it well: the time between deciding and publishing. The piece leaves the phone of the person who checked the price and enters the playlist of every screen in minutes, with no USB stick and no walking round the store. If your promotions change daily, that is a real gain — and it is the only gain you can honestly claim for the tool.
What the screen does not solve on its own: deciding what to publish, checking the price before publishing, and taking the piece down when the promotion ends. That remains a human routine, and it is what the next section is about.
The distinction nobody makes: three different products
The generic advice "swap the paper sign for a digital TV" collapses three product categories that do different jobs into a single sentence. Confusing them is what turns a screen project into frustration by month two.
| Category | What it is | Who updates the price | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electronic shelf label (ESL) | A small display per product, fixed to the shelf | The store system, along with the checkout | Unit price on the shelf — it satisfies the duty to price next to the item |
| Digital price board | A screen listing prices, integrated with the ERP | The system | Butchery, produce and bakery, where item-by-item labelling is impractical |
| Content Indoor TV (JMV Indoor) | A screen with video, campaigns and offers | A person, from a phone or the dashboard | Promotions, bundles, brand and talking to whoever is already in the store |
Saying it plainly: JMV Indoor is the third column. There is no ERP or point-of-sale integration, and there is no "the price changed in the system, so the screen changed by itself". If your goal is a price synchronised with the checkout, the right tool is another one — and that is fine. Better to say it here than to discover it later.
The legal layer that separates the three columns
This is not only a product question: Brazilian law does not treat the three as interchangeable either.
- In self-service stores and supermarkets, prices are displayed by printing or affixing the price on the packaging, by a reference code, or by barcode (Law 10.962/2004, article 2, item II). When a reference code or barcode is used, the sole paragraph requires price information to be displayed clearly next to the items on display.
- Decree 5.903/2006, in article 2, paragraph 1, item III, defines precision as information that is exact, defined and physically or visually attached to the product it refers to, with no physical or visual obstruction in between.
- The "price list" format — the board used in butchery and produce — is subsidiary: under Law 10.962, article 3, and Decree 5.903, article 8, it may only be used when it is impossible to use the normal display methods.
- And article 4 of the decree closes the loop from the other side: prices of goods on sale must remain visible to consumers at all times while the establishment is open to the public.
The practical rule for putting a price on the screen
Showing prices on a content screen is perfectly possible — it is what the offer pieces for the end cap, the butchery and the aisle entrance do. What changes is the routine around it.
- Whoever publishes must be able to check. Before uploading the piece, check the same item in three places: shelf, checkout and piece. If the price information systems of the store diverge, the consumer pays the lowest of them (Law 10.962/2004, article 5) — and assigning different prices to the same item is an express infringement (Decree 5.903/2006, article 9, item VII), subject to the Consumer Protection Code penalties. It is not only about losing margin: it is conduct listed in a decree.
- Every piece with a price is born with an end date. The commonest mistake is not the wrong price: it is the eternal piece. Schedule the exit when you schedule the entry.
- The piece goes off air the minute the promotion ends. That "same minute" is the only real gain of the screen over paper — so it is exactly what has to be written into the routine, with an owner per shift.
- Weekly review of what is on air. It is the digital equivalent of collecting forgotten signs: someone walks through the playlist and checks what is still being displayed. Five minutes a week.
- The label stays. The piece on the screen is an additional offer; price identification next to the product remains mandatory.
If that discipline sounds familiar, it is because the operational side was already described in how store staff update Indoor TV from a phone during idle time — the rule of only publishing price, payment terms and promotion deadlines after checking them. This article is the legal explanation of why that rule exists.
When it is better not to show a price on the screen
You can use the screen to sell without taking on the article 30 obligation. In some cases that is the smarter choice:
- Brand and institutional campaigns. Launches, suppliers, seasonal themes — the piece creates desire and sends the customer to the aisle, while the price lives on the label.
- Bundles without a closed value. "Buy 3, pay 2" communicates the benefit without fixing a number that might diverge from the checkout.
- Volatile pricing. Produce that changes price by lot and by day is a natural candidate for a piece with no value: show the product and the place, not the number.
- Chains with different prices per store. If the same piece runs across several units, a price in the artwork is an invitation to divergence. Either the piece is per store, or it carries no price.
A piece that says where the offer is and invites the customer to check the price on the label still sells — and it removes any mismatch between screen and checkout. The positioning logic by store zone is in Indoor TV by store zone.
Two special cases: expiry dates and medicines
The flash offer used to clear perishables
The most profitable use of the screen in a supermarket is warning shoppers, in time, about a lot that is close to its expiry date. It is also where the obligation bites hardest: a "valid for the next 30 minutes" countdown is an operational promise, and whoever saw the piece and reached the checkout has an argument. The full routine — checking, the cut-off rule per category, the time-based schedule and taking the piece down — is in how to use the supermarket TV to sell food close to its expiry date.
Discounts on medicines on a pharmacy screen
If your chain has a pharmacy, the rules there are stricter than in the rest of the store: advertising a discount on a medicine by any means requires keeping a list visible to the public, and each type of medicine has its own set of format requirements. The rule-by-rule detail is in what you can show on a pharmacy TV under Brazil's RDC 96. The same "what the rules allow on a screen" logic appears, for another sector, in TV in a dental office waiting room and the CFO advertising rules.
It is worth noting that the Brazilian retail checkout faces another structural change in the coming years, with tax collected automatically at the moment of payment — the subject of split payment in retail in 2028. None of that changes the displayed price rule, but it does change the routine of whoever runs the front end.
Want to test offer communication on screens without touching the shelf label?
Prices and what each plan includes are always up to date on the JMV Indoor plans table — you can start with a single point, in your busiest section, before rolling it out to the whole store. Prefer the context first? The full Café & Tech episode about Indoor TV in supermarkets is on YouTube.
Indoor TV is an application of digital signage at the point of sale, and its best role in price communication is as a complement: reaching whoever is in the wrong aisle at the right minute, while the shelf label keeps doing the job the law assigns to it. If you are unsure how to design your store's offer schedule, talk to us through the contact form.
Frequently asked questions
The first four questions come from Google's "people also ask" box for shelf price different from the checkout price, measured on 19/09/2026 — answered here from the point of view of the retailer who has to prevent it.
What should a store do when the shelf price differs from the checkout price?
Must a supermarket sell at the sign price if the sign is wrong?
Can I sell the same product at different prices?
Does a price advertised on the store TV count as a binding offer?
Does Indoor TV update prices automatically from my ERP?
What is the difference between an electronic shelf label and Indoor TV?
How long can a promotion stay on air after it ends?
Can the store TV replace the shelf price label?
Notice. This text is informative and does not constitute legal advice. Your store's pricing policy and offer communication should be validated with your company's legal team, which knows your contracts, your operation and the applicable state and municipal rules.