In many developed countries, the main demand and sales for Hang Tabs is generated at the Point of Sale (POS).

These developed countries have most of their non-food products produced and packaged in lower cost areas such as Asia and in particular China.  Where manufacture takes place in the developed country there is the opportunity to supply Hang Tabs to these regional manufacturers.  These opportunities are quite rare as the Hang Tabs are usually applied by hand except in very large scale packaging operations where they may be applied using labelling machines.

Applying Hang Tabs by hand is a costly business and the trend for hang sales of goods manufactured in these countries is to insure the hang sell feature is built into the packaging.  In some instances it is difficult or even not possible to have a built in hang sell feature.  A good example of where a Hang Tab is necessary for hang sell is where goods are shrink-wrapped with a film of plastic and there must not be any holes in this plastic.

Nevertheless, most Hang Tabs sales are to the point of purchase.

Retail shops need to maximise their sales which can be very dependent on how they display their best selling items and items they wish to promote.  It can be costly for shops to hold on to stock for too long as it is capital tied up and even worse capital lost where goods have a shelf life.

Bringing goods up to the eye level of clients and providing more choice and variety within the confines of the retail space available is a key priority for the shopkeeper.  Hang sell of products is a key way to achieve better product visibility and higher density displays.  The tools of Hang sell are Hang Tabs, often referred to as display hooks or Do-Its or even Scotchpads and display strips also called hang strips.

The hang tabs consist of clear pieces of plastic which are partially backed with adhesive. The adhesive section sticks to the product to be displayed and the non-adhesive section with a hanging hole profile projects above the product.  The product having been converted to hang sell is now hung from pegs, rails or hang strips.

Another reason why the POS will need hang tabs is to repair hang sell items that have damaged.  Often cardboard products with a Hang Sell built into the cardboard can tear.  Another common problem is when hang sell holes are cut into packaging like lollies and the cut is not clean.  In these instances the hanging hole can be weekend or not even present.  Large supermarket chain stores will go through hundreds of thousands of hang tabs just to repair broken hang sell packets.

While many shops continue to use older or more traditional format Hang Tabs such as those supplied in rolls or in sheets there is a growing awareness of the Pad Format Hang Tabs.  While the Pad Format Hang Tabs may cost one or two cents more per Hang Tab the added convenience of this format should easily pay for itself.  Pad Format Hang Tabs enables shop staff to easily carry 200 Hang Tabs in their pocket at any time and as these Pad Format Hang Tabs have five to ten times less backing paper per Hang Tab they take up much less space.  Sheet form and roll form Hang Tabs can be stuffed into a pocket but the pocket needs to be fairly large pockets and there is a strong likelihood Hang Tabs will be lost or spoilt by coming off their backing while still in that jammed pocket.