High Tech Shopping Carts Offer Discounts, Ads

An anonymous reader writes "'Imagine walking down a supermarket aisle and hearing a chime as you pass the peanut butter letting you know it's on sale. Or picture reading the local five-day weather forecast, checking the Dow Jones industrial average and finding a new chicken and rice recipe, all from your shopping basket. Souped up with a computer attachment, your shopping cart could become a know-it-all that gives you special discounts based on what you buy or provides news and information as you sail through grocery aisles.' Full story here, and the Cart manufacturer's site here. I might just have to warshop in Moraga today..."

Comments

the real reason

[dirvish]

The real purpose is customer tracking. The only reason stores are going to spend money on this kind of stuff is to better seperate customers from their money. If they can profile customers they can better market towards them.

Re:the real reason

[sjlutz]

And profiling customers is a bad thing? Here's my take on it:
1) Advertising isn't going away, it's increasing, we are getting bombarded everywhere, now even in video game.

2) Why not give enough information to the sellers so that they can give me offers that I might actually like?

Example, if everytime I passed the Diaper isle, I was told about the sale on Pampers, I would ignore because I don't need diapers. Worse, it would become annoying. But if everytime I walked down the soda isle and was told Mountain Dew was on sale, I would buy it, even if I didn't need it, because we all know you can never have too much Dew.. For those privacy advocates out there, do you REALLY care that the managers of a supermarket know you buy a pack of pringles every shopping trip? Yes, I do care if the government wants to know, but not some store managers .

Re:the real reason

[The Visiting Priest]

Yes, profiling customers is a bad thing (for the customer).

You think that if you buy mountain dew frequently that they're going to give you a discount? Dream on. You'll more likely find out that mountain dew is the one beverage that you NEVER get a discount on.

(But their competitors might start offering discounts on stuff you'd never drink in a million years)

Re:the real reason

[5KVGhost]

That's true, of course. But it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Once upon a time, for example, everyone's shopping habits were "tracked" by the grocer behind the counter. He could easily gauge the buying habits of all his regular customers and make appropriate recommendations. The anonymity of the modern shopping experience is more of an accident than an expectation.

Re:the real reason

[ChaosDiscord]

For those privacy advocates out there, do you REALLY care that the managers of a supermarket know you buy a pack of pringles every shopping trip?

The problem isn't that the manager knows. The problem is that any number of "trusted" employees will know. One or more of employees may be willing to resell (or just give away) your information. Heck, for the right amount of money I'm sure the store will happily sell the information. I for one purchase personal hygiene and pharmacy products at my local supermarket. If I'm a politician trying to appease a rigid Catholic demographic, I might prefer that my political opponents not be able to prove that I purchase of condoms or birth control pills. I'd rather my health insurance didn't have the opportunity to analyze my buying habits of aspirin and antacids to decide if I've become too risky. Or even if my health insurance decides I buy too much junk food, my auto insurance decides that I buy too much alcohol. Or perhaps my opponent for a county board seat will get the information and claim, "Bob sure buys alot of alcohol, are you sure you want someone who buys that much alcohol on the board?" A potential employer might make collecting such information part of their check on me before hiring me.

The probably isn't that the store knows. To the store I'm only interesting as a relatively anonymous consumer. The problem is that once the information is collected that it will become available to other people who may be interested in me personally. There is a serious risk of abuse. If government agents who have been specifically screened for security purposes occasionally decide to abuse the information (like Robert Hanseen, a few Michigan police, amoung other cases), why should I trust the night shift manager at my local supermarket who hates his job at my local supermarket?

Pleeeeeeze.

[AyeRoxor!]

I remember when Kash n Karry (a redneck we-cant-spell-isnt-it-cute) chain in Florida tried to put simple calculators in the plastic cover of the cart's pushbar. They lasted about a month. Good luck with these. The rain, the abuse, the kids in the kidseats. They had better be solid steel.

Re:Practical use!!!

[tomhudson]

So, since they're wireless, what's to keep somebody from "war-shopping", skimming the info, and generating their own 100% discount coupons?

I've already figured out how the bar codes worked at the local store, and, if I wasn't honest, I could alter the tickets that bottle refund machines give me to give back $10.00 on a 5 cent bottle.

And no, the cashier would be none the wiser - she just would scan in the altered bar-code, in either scenario.

Re:Nagging shopping carts

[aridhol]

How about a built in scanner so you can see how much something costs or keep track of how much you are spending?

Now there's a useful idea. Thing is, it won't happen. If you are shopping and you keep seeing this number counting up in front of you every time you put something in your basket, you'll subconsciously want to keep that number low. So you'll probably buy less than you would if the cost hits you all at once at the register.

The biggest improvement in shopping carts...

[jea6]

...in the past 100 years is not in making them computerized...it's been making them fun for kids. My local supermarkets have this kind of kid-friendly cart. They are really great. If only more innovations addressed actual needs....

No wonder they call us "consumers".

[seanadams.com]

I just don't understand. There's all this bullshit in the grocery stores now to collect our personal information and track what we buy, and I don't hear ANYONE complaining.

I used to shop at Albertson's because they were the one store in my area which didn't use the friggin savings cards. They actually advertised this. Now everyone's using the cards, and they're marketing it on TV like it's a good thing for us.

Every time I go to the store, the clerk asks me if I have the card, and I politely say "no, can I use yours?" Sometimes they have a card sitting there, but more often than not, he'll interrogate me as to why I don't want a card. If forced to get a card, I'll either fill out phony information, or I'll check the box that says I don't want to give my info (if there is one). Then I conspicuously forget the card on the counter when I leave.

One time, the clerk was being especially pushy about getting me to sign up for the card. The customer behind me overhead our conversation and butted in "personally, I like the savings." Meanwhile, people in the aisles on either side of me obediently furnished their cards, one after another, from their overstuffed purses and massive keychains. What the hell is wrong with you people?

Re:Practical use!!!

[beebware]

Proper barcodes shouldn't allow you to do that. The barcode "number" should only relate to a database entry which then should give information such as price/discount details. Barcodes do not (or should not) contain any pricing information of any sort (see how barcodes work)

In your scenerio, you should need to alter the barcode to reflect another database entry corresponding to the discount you are after (and I'm sure/hope the store doesn't sequentially allocate discount codes) AND get it past any fail safe systems the EPOS has in place ($0.05-$10.00: reject) AND hit on a discount code which at least slightly reflects the product description (say the discount voucher was for a bottle of shampoo and you just happen to hit on a $30.00 off champagne voucher - then the till-operator should spot the difference). Oh: don't forget the checksum at the end of the barcode as well.

If you can get away with this as easily as you make out - well, that store is just about asking to be ripped off: so name it here so they can be Slashdotted in a physical sense (imagine loads of geeks hitting the same store chain with faked vouchers :) )

Killer App: Shopping list display on cart:

[mekkab]

let me beam my shopping list from my PDA/cell phone to the cart. Its annoying running around a store with a Visor in 1 hand and the cart in the other.

Let me look at the list and check items off.
If you want to get crafty- tell me what aisles my products are in and tell me what sales you are having.
To make it even craftier- add that UPC scanner, and let me scan in my cupons- THEN have the cart tell me which one is cheaper.

All I react to are "sales" and the sales associated with the club card. If Diet Pepsi is on sale I'll buy that instead of diet coke, and vice versa. I have relatively little brand loyalty so gear your advertisements in a way that works.

Yeah, that's a nice idea but...

[bigmouth_strikes]

...howabout they figure out how to make it virtual ? We need online grocery shopping with deliveries so that we don't have to spend our time doing the neverending shopping ourselves.

There has got to be a way to arrange it so that the customers can share the delivery costs and still save money compared to driving their own vehicle to the supermarket.

I can't believe WebVan blew a billion dollars on this.

Checking the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

[ChaosDiscord]

Great! "Hmmm, I wonder if I can afford the nice steaks or it's ground chuck tonight... oh my, my stocks just went through the floor, I guess it's ground chuck tonight."

No, wait, that's a stupid idea.

Some people seems to have forgotten that you first identify a problem, then you provide a solution. Providing a solution, then looking for a problem is usually doomed to failure. I fail to see a realistic case where getting stock quotes in the supermarket solves anyones problem.

Paranoia Gets the Best of Us - Again...

[PhiloHmm]

It seems to me that this idea is a great idea if used for something aside from just telling you what is on sale and how your AAPL or MSFT stock is doing. Our paranoia shouldn't stand in the way of innovation so long as our information is protected and private. Consider the following benefits that your mom or wife could reap since God knows most of us don't do extensive grocery runs...

For example, as you significant other walks through the store and places things in the cart, it would be nice if the LCD showed how much the entire contents cost. This could very easily be done once RFIDs are used on all the items in the store (not a long way off either)

Another example would be for the loading a list into your cart from a PDA and having the cart "map" an efficient path through the store or tell you if something was out of stock or not on the shelf. If your cart saw that you wanted something that wasn't on the shelf, but was in stock an employee from the store could grab it and walk it up to you. It would be great if just once I could get back from the grocery store without forgetting something on the dang list.

Sure it could tell you what is on sale as you walk by an isle, saving plenty of employee time from updating labels (an estimated 80 hour per week task) and "enlightening" you with up to date information but this is something that isn't of deep or immediate value to shoppers.

In conclusion, we're all scared of what retailers know about us - but is the paranoia really worth it?

I, Neo-Luddite

[limekiller4]

Over the years I've read a good number of neo-luddite vs. the technopop set. I never could identify with the luddites much less imagine I'd side with them. Well I'm starting to.

"There's the TV. It's all right there. Commercials. We are not productive anymore, they don't need us to make things anymore, it's all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers. Okay, buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, you know what? You're mentally ill! That's a fact! If you don't buy things...toilet paper, new cars, computerized blenders, electrically operated sexual devices... SCREWDRIVERS WITH MINIATURE BUILT-IN RADAR DEVICES, STEREO SYSTEMS WITH BRAIN IMPLANTED HEADPHONES, VOICE- ACTIVATED COMPUTERS, ..." - Jeffrey, 12 Monkeys

I'm sick of all this crap. I want to walk through my !@#$ing local grocery store, unmolested, and enjoy the process. Is this so hard to understand?

But why?

[dk.r*nger]

Or picture reading the local five-day weather forecast, checking the Dow Jones industrial average and finding a new chicken and rice recipe

Ok, we get computers in refridgerators so we can order groceries directly from the fridge door Wow! But it works GREAT from my desktop.

Why would I get my fat ass up and go the the kitchen to order groceries? And go to the fireplace-computer to see the weather forecast to know if i have to fire it up.. and to the lawnmover-computer to see how much the grass grows.. and so and so on..

The point of having a computer on the frigde would be as a virtual note-holder for the family and possibly to get recipes of the web with, but only because of its location.

While I can see the point in getting recipes on the cart (maybe even syncing with my inhouse inventory server, to see what ingredients I need), a stock ticker or the weather is about the last thing I need when shopping. D*mn! The DOW is down 0.5, I better get lots of oatmeal? People for whom that matters, get that kind of info pushed to their cellphones.

There's no way in hell this'll work

[Metalhead01]

I used to work at a very busy grocery store when I was in high school, and I've seen first-hand the abuse shpooing carts go through. They're routinely kicked, smashed, knocked over, ran into walls, ran into people, broken and battered. Shopping carts at grocery stores don't last that long, either because the fucking idiotic customers beat them to shit or the homeless bums take them away.

Why would these super-nifty carts be immune to this? Why would they not suffer the same fate? It's damn near impossible to keep people from being stupid and smashing into stuff, or taking the carts home with them.

Another thing to consider is the fact that these are going to be very expensive. Most grocery stores aren't raking in the cash, and if they have to but a few thousand carts every few weeks to replace stolen or damaged ones, they're either going to go belly-up or forget about the whole thing.

Won't last ong....

[eniacpx]

If there a touchscreen LCD display and builtin wireless....hmmm can you say free tablet PC to anyone that has a screwdriver?