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More on Talking Shopping Carts
ThosLives writes "CNN.com is reporting a story about Talking Shopping Carts. (I rue the day when viruses attack these carts, telling everyone to go buy Brand X). This article also has some interesting comments about possible (and likely inevitable) uses of RFID. I wonder, in the future, will I be able to buy anything with our new funny colored cash dollars?" We've mentioned these before.
"Who is it who decides that bread and tortilla products are unrelated?"
The whole concept behind store layout is to ensure that the average customer has to pass as much of the shelf space in the shop as possible. The theory is that, in doing this, impulse buying rates are increased. This is also the reason that shops rearrange the products on a regular basis, so that shoppers are forces to pay attention to the products on the shelves rather than go directly towards those they actually want to buy.
Supermarkets layout is actually a quite sophisticated process. Ever notice how the bakery is often close to the entrance? The smell of freshly baked bread, cookies, etc. is there to entice you and start a Pavlovian hunger response. You will buy more food when hungry. Next in line are the perishable food depts. (produce, meat, deli). They want you to take the perishable products off of their hands quickly so they do not have time to spoil. The last aisle usually contains the nessecity items that you want most such as milk, egss, bread, etc. They put this at the back of in order to get you to walk all the way through the rest of the store in hopes that you will make some impulse-purchases on the way (mmm.... Screaming Yellow Zonkers). The rest of the aisles are also laid on in some shopping-frenzy inducing pattern.
TODO: Insert witty sig
Ah.. hellloooooo... RTFA... They say you will be able to swipe your prefered customer card and the cart will bring up items you've purchased before. Also, you can check out items by scanning them into the cart! This means the cart has to connect to the central computer, and it has to be updatable in case they change prices, sales adds.. etc. Your obvoiusly not going to walk around the store with an ethernet cable tethering you to the main office, so they'll put in a wireless networking connection... Bring in your wireless gear... try enough times as you wander around, and you'll probably be able to override whatevers programmed into them.
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*