The start of summer marks a high-intensity period for retail, and the launch of the summer sales season prompts many Polish consumers to open their wallets and finally check items off their wish lists. In fact, three out of five Poles use seasonal promotions as a tool for deliberate household budget management—not as an excuse for impulse buying. This surge in demand creates a real challenge for retail chains, which need to deliver a consistent customer experience across every channel while also guaranteeing system reliability and uninterrupted sales. One solution is the iXpos system, built to execute even the most complex promotional campaigns without a hitch.
Customer Loyalty Comes at a Price—Often a Discounted One
Three out of four consumers have a go-to brand within each product category, yet one in three Poles admits to buying those very products only when they’re on sale. Brand loyalty clearly loses out to price across many categories: shoppers are quick to switch suppliers when a competing offer looks more attractive, particularly for furniture and toys (72% of respondents for each) and apparel (66%). Retailers are looking for ways to strengthen customer loyalty by rewarding it directly – through loyalty programs and repeat-customer discounts– while also refining the shopping experience itself.
A seamless omnichannel experience and a simplified online checkout are now the baseline expectation, and intense competition makes it increasingly difficult to stand out and build a lasting edge over rivals. It’s worth mapping the customer journey step by step to identify even small opportunities for improvement. Sometimes adding a payment method or trimming a few fields from a checkout form is enough to meaningfully reduce cart abandonment. Consumers also gravitate toward online channels because, unlike brick-and-mortar stores, they’re available 24/7– which is exactly why system reliability is so critical to the sales you depend on.
Rising Foot Traffic: A Stress Test for Sales Systems
Retail chains today depend heavily on technology and on the continuous, reliable operation of their sales systems– and customers have zero tolerance for checkout glitches or long waits to complete a purchase. Even brief outages can damage the customer experience and brand reputation, and loyalty itself is often conditional: driven by a lack of real alternatives (37% of respondents) or by sheer habit (one in three). It’s easy to see how, during the summer sales rush, customers become more price-sensitive and quicker to check out the competition– making any technical glitch carry far greater weight than usual.
How to Prepare Your POS System for Sales Season
Before the sales season kicks off, it’s worth auditing your POS system to confirm it can handle higher traffic volumes and execute your planned promotional campaigns. To do that, you should:
- Update both operating systems and the dedicated applications used at points of sale.
- Verify that the software runs smoothly and doesn’t conflict with the hardware it’s installed on.
- Confirm that your promotional strategy can actually be implemented on the POS system you use.
Keep in mind that not every system on the market supports multi-tiered rules (such as thresholds tied to receipt totals or so-called cascading discounts) or promotional mechanisms involving loyalty points, gift cards, and vouchers. Sometimes an upgrade is exactly what’s needed– iXpos Loyalty & Promotion Service is built to handle even the most complex promotional scenarios and to create personalized, precisely “targeted” discounts based on each customer’s purchase history.
Customers Expect Consistency Across Every Channel
Omnichannel retail is already the standard for certain product categories, such as apparel and electronics, and consumers navigate it fluidly– choosing e-commerce when they want a lower price and the convenience of home delivery and heading to a physical store when they need to check product quality or make an immediate purchase. Problems can arise when a customer tries to return an online purchase in a brick-and-mortar store, since not every retail chain supports that option. The rules governing returns and complaints are changing under EU Directive 2023/2673, which takes effect on June 19, 2026, and is designed to simplify the withdrawal process– with regulators aiming to make returning an item just as easy as buying it.
IT Solutions That Power Omnichannel Sales
Regardless of which sales channel a customer chooses, they have every right to expect convenience and clear rules– and it’s on the retailer to deliver that, so shopping stays a genuinely pleasant experience. In an omnichannel model, one of the technologies supporting this is RabbitMQ. This open-source message broker excels in distributed systems and keeps operations running even in offline mode. The iXpos system, delivered by INEO Group, can be integrated with, among others:
- E-commerce and m-commerce platforms (Magento, PrestaShop)
- Loyalty program platforms (Spartan, e-Pruf)
- ERP systems (e.g., Dynamics 365, SAP)
- Warehouse management systems (WMS)
- Payment terminals (e.g., Elavon, Ingenico, eService)
- Courier and shipping systems (e.g., InPost, DPD, GLS)
- Business intelligence tools (e.g., Power BI, Tableau)
- Poland’s National e-Invoice System (KSeF)
- Access control and gate systems
For retail chains, the summer sales season is when technology is put to the real-world test. Higher customer traffic, multiple concurrent promotions, and sales across several channels all demand seamless communication between systems. When data on pricing, discounts, inventory levels, and customer purchase history stays consistent, it’s far easier to avoid checkout errors, service delays, and failed transactions. That’s why a well-prepared POS system is one of the key pillars of smooth customer service – helping stores capture the full potential of sales season instead of getting caught up in operational chaos.
1. https://ewp.pl/polacy-poluja-na-promocje-nowy-raport-pokazuje-jak-zmieniaja-sie-zwyczaje-zakupowe-online/
2. https://retailnet.pl/2025/11/27/raport-nowa-era-lojalnosci-w-e-commerce/
3. 2026 Consumer Sentiment Survey. Poland, Boston Consulting Group, p. 8, https://web-assets.bcg.com/cc/b2/971a29b44ddbaf328fcf32c09fdf/2026-eu-consumer-sentiment-poland-june-2026.pdf
4. https://retailnet.pl/2025/11/27/raport-nowa-era-lojalnosci-w-e-commerce/
5. „Nowy konsument, nowe centrum handlowe”, CBRE, p. 11-12, https://mktgdocs.cbre.com/2299/9e75a407-8e0c-4968-9fc2-0f793f130dc5-914311037/Nowy_konsument__nowe_centra_ha.pdf
