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High-Tech Shopping Carts
neutron_p writes "A Massachusetts-based supermarket chain says it will roll out new intelligent shopping carts that promise to make food shopping much more personalized and interactive. They will let shoppers email their shopping lists to the store and check prices on the spot. Each new 'Shopping Buddy' cart mounts a wireless, touch-screen IBM computer, equipped with a laser scanner. The computer will also alert shoppers as they approach favorite items or promotions."
[BA-DA-BUM!]
I'll be here all night!
stop!! You need to buy two boxes of twinkies.
I bet the homeless people will be happy.
Where is my towel?
Oh well, what the hell...
Alerting the homeless person who just stole the cart when they are coming upon an empty cardboard box.
I thought we already had those.
Oh.. Wait.
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
...and yet they still can't make them go straight when you push 'em.
Technology run amuck. It makes life easier until it makes us our slaves
No sig for you!!
This could make the carts a great target. Also, will the bag lady's get wi-fi on these things.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
I like gadgets as much as the next geek, but isn't this a little absurd? Grocery shopping is not that difficult, people.
Hi, It seems your trying to buy groceries, I can assist you by.....
"On your left is new, improved, Scratch-No-More cream! Try it on that mysterious rash, instead of that off-brand cream you've been buying recently!"
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
"Hello, I am your Automated Checkout Buddy!"
"According to your 'Shopping Buddy', you have been purchasing steaks and mayonnaise and whole milk and cookies and ice cream more often than should a man of your height and weight...
"So we have added a mandatory health insurance/HMO/medicare surcharge to your total.
"Have a nice day!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I used to work at a grocery store that had calculators on every cart. Guess what? They were removed because people weren't spending enough!
The computer will also alert shoppers as they approach favorite items or promotions.
Oh great, like I need a machine alerting me and everyone around me that we're approaching the condom aisle and there's a discount on my usual brand in bulk quantities.
...
Ok, yeah, i know, wishful thinking...
this isn't a sig. i type this (including the two dashes), every time i post, just to make it look like a sig.
Gotta hate that last part. "The computer will also alert shoppers as they approach favorite items or promotions". First of all, I can remember myself what are my favorite items, thanks a lot. Secondly, I have the feeling that "promotions" will be in 99% cases stuff I don`t need.
High tech isn't always good, remember that. Sometimes a shopping cart is best left as.. well, a shopping cart.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I've been using the computer carts at Stop & Shop in Quincy MA(S&S HQ), and they are really cool. When you go down an isle it will tell you what you normally buy, and what's on sale. it will keep a running total of how much $$ your current cart costs, and when it's time to check out, you just walk up to the register, swip your shopper card, then pay.
I just wish they would pay me for doing my own bagging and scanning!!!!!
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
http://www.skoopy.com/show2.php?id=755&type=VI D/
I see you're trying to buy some ice cream.
Would you like me to.
*Suggest a flavour
*Warn you about your weight
*Make on of the wheels on the trolley wonky and steer you to the frozen yoghurt section
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
In soviet russia......shopping cart pushes you
Massachusetts' mayor annoounced a program to educate the city's bums in order for them to take advantage of the new high-tech shopping cart technology, like inventory tracking of all the cans/stuff they put in and a wireless service that provides aluminum-can-to-booze market ratios for them to get more bang from their cans.
Slap a motor on to those wheels, add microprocessor controlled steering, and a robotic arm and I wouldn't need to go into the store at all.
I suppose this sort of thing is intended to speed up or minimize what for most people is a mindless chore. But I wonder how it would impact those who shop for joy, as with cloths and fashion at department stores or in my case, gadgets and electronics at the local Fry's or Microcenter. How many slasdot geeks pay attention to the PR and promotional advertising anyway? Free is always a good thing, but I've learned not to trust sales pitches as much as my own ability to do research.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
They will be used partly like Clippy or Bonsai Buddy...
"You seem to be heading towards our towel section. Please check our our monthly specials on bathroom rugs"
OTOH, this could be quite useful if it was used as an information service rather than a marketing oportunity. For exmaple: Can't find an item? Have the shopping cart locate it for you! Want to know what the specials are in a given department? Look them up on your shopping card...
This sort of thing could be really useful, but I dread having a talking paperclip appear and say
"You appear to be writing a letter. May I suggest that you buy our envelopes?. Also we have paper on isle 4 and postage stamps at the register"
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
until it starts bitching at people if they buy their usual foods, instead of government-approved healthy stuff?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
And there have been countless times that someone has thought my trolly was theirs and just walked off with it. Nomatter how high or low tech it is there will be a way for people to rip it off.
These things won't last...
I spent two years at the local Food City, and carts get banged around to no end. Unless those carts are used in a specialty grocer where they don't venture out much, they're wasting their money...
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
Impulse Buying Power??
"I'll be here all night!"
Not if your wife has anything to say about it.
People have been hacking their XBoxes and Palm Pilots to run Linux for a while now. Any bets on how long it will be before someone decides to put Linux on their shopping cart? (Wow, that sentence really sounds weird...)
Albertsons has used the Dallas area as test reigon for their "shop and scan" system, where people can scan their club cards and a system will releice a wireless scanner which you can take around the store and use to scan your items as you go. When you are done you scan a bar code telling it you are done and then go to any checkout aisle (self-checkout or normal) and scan your club card again, which will automatically ring up all the items you scanned. The tranceivers resemble the little bar code scanners they use to scan large items left in a cart. They have a low-res LCD display the reads out basically the same info that goes on the receipt.
I have used this at two stores. It is nice, though you have to get used to having to scan your own items. One of the stores routinely sent promo offers as I shopped, which was really annoying. You could not scan anything for about 10 seconds after it beeped to tell you that you could get dogfood two for a dollar or something. They both had a scroll-through menu of promotions, which was good.
One great (planned for soon) feature is notification of perscriptions being filled as you go around the store, or of one hour photo development. I do not use these services, but I could see the convinience.
I really don't get those that honestly view this as a client-side consideration. Computers are cheaper than checkers.
Basically, looks like it's already been trialled for some months - don't know if it's been more widely rolled out yet, though. I can't say it surprises me, there have been several attempts at less high-tech gadgets at supermarkets near me.
As far as I know they've all failed - I think most young people just want groceries, although there is a bit of a gadget appeal, and older people who might be more likely to make lists and so are adverse to the tech. Personally, I go into a shop, grab what I need and leave, I wouldn't use anything high-tech cause I can't see it helping me get what I need faster.
In addition, future features could include pharmacy favorites, ordering and notification, as well as product information that allows for comparison with similar items, consumer ratings and gift suggestions.
Wife: I can't believe you gave our nine-year old son a box of detergent for a birthday present!
Husband: I know, that's the last time I get my gift advice from a fucking shopping cart!
"I spent two years at the local Food City..."
:)
What's that in human years?
Seriously they could make it work. The problem that all of them have had was the (breakable) technology on the cart. RF Chip the cart (or better the shopping card) and that sound system mentioned on Slashdot awhile back that allows you to direct the sound to an individual listener (think OnStar in reverse). "Make a left at the end of the aisle you're in, go straight to aisle 12, walk five feet, and look down on the shelf on your right, and oh, by the way, beef ribs are on sale"(1).
(1) Lasers could paint directions on the floor when you get close.
In Connecticut I've been using the automated checkout for about a year and a half. It is very convenient, but it is a computer, in a supermarket. Cashiers use glorified calculators, but the automated checkout is the real deal, a computer that needs the love and care of a sysadmin that the grocery store environment does not provide. A fleet of computerized shopping carts is not what these stores need.
I was in the process of checking out, when I paid with cash, then finished paying with a debit card. No receipt came, I brought this to the attention of the person who attends the 4 automatic checkouts. Well, there was no receipt because there was no record of my transaction, my paying, or the items in my cart ever being scanned or going through the belt. Testing showed that it could create new transaction entries, so it was looking very much like I was trying to steal those ~$70 worth of groceries.
30 minutes later, nothing really resolved, because there was nothing apparently wrong with the machine and no alarms went off as I bagged my groceries that went through the belt, they let me go despite all evidence pointing towards my guilt.
The next time I checked myself out and paid with cash & debit I got no receipt. I didn't say anything, and I don't pay with cash & debit anymore.
oh how wonderful: Now our shopping carts can spam us. YOU'VE GOT MAIL!. The in-store pharmacy reports you have a prescription for Viagra. Based on customers with similar prescriptions ...Other products that may interest you are handcream, vaginal lubricants, ky jelly,the sports illustrated swimsuit edition and Depends--the oops undergarment for seniors.
Now I have way to know when I'm approaching my favorite items!
Before, I had to rely on blind luck. I would run into the supermarket, eyes clos...hey wait a minute!!
I'VE GOT EYES!!!!!! I just forgot to open them all this time!
Problem solved!
Seriously, the more I learn about technology, the more I believe it should be kept FAR AWAY FROM PEOPLE.
In the old days, the lay people would be afraid of technology and what it might do to impact their lives negatively, while the scientists and smart people tried to explain the benefits.
Now it's the other way around.. lay people just LOVE all this crap, and the smart people are going, "uhm, you know when your email goes BING every five seconds and you go to check it, that actually makes you LESS productive even though you are BUSIER?" and "yes, that bluetooth feature is cool, but did you know that I just downloaded your whole contact list, including the speed-dial entry for 1-800-GRANNY-GASH?" and "actually, electronic voting machines DO run on the same version of windows that you use" and so on and so on....
"Grocery shopping is not that difficult, people."
Is it? I'm still trying to figure out how people can bring a shopping cart train to the register. Pull out a wad of coupons, and spend a pittance on food. Especially with the limits on those coupons, and in the store.
1. Increase overhead astronomically.
2. ???
3. Profit!
"I really don't get those that honestly view this as a client-side consideration. Computers are cheaper than checkers."
But not as cheap as a former IT worker.
More bling bling for the hobos?
"To be is to do." -Socrates
"To do is to be." -Jean-Paul Sartre
"Do-be-do-be-do." -Frank Sinatra
Winco shopping carts here in Reno NV now have "smart wheels" that lock up if they leave the parking lot.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Not being in the grocery business myself, it's hard for me to get excited about this fantastic new technology.
gives the shopper such features as: blah, blah, [trying to get you to buy more stuff]
could offer such personal shopping assistance as: blah-blah, [getting you to buy even more stuff]
In addition, future features could include... blah blah [additional efforts to get you to buy still more stuff]
1. Are they weatherproof? Will they go berserk from leaving them in the rain?
2. You can now get your car dinged by a shopping cart that costs around the same or more than some used cars.
3. Will the homeless have to pay property tax on a shopping cart that costs so much!
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
This is all a huge scam. I worked with a major S. Cal grocery chain (that must go unnamed) during their early experiments in "smart carts." They have no interest whatsoever in improving your shopping experience with smart carts. Their sole motivation is to gather more customer data. Did you know that grocery chains make far more money selling customer data than they do selling groceries? The profit margin on groceries is very slim, but corporations will pay big bucks for consumer purchasing behavior records. They want huge databases of purchasing behavior so the can statistically analyze what other products customers are buying alongside their products.
This system requires the use of email, right?
... and more electronic junk mail, too!
Well then, there's only one certain outcome of this system: more spam!
~UP
Eat the Path.
Anouncer here we are folks at the 2004 shoping cart Wars finals, and our runner up finalists are Wal_Mart_Soul_Crusher and Shoping_Spree_ManiacII.Many of you may be wondering were the NASA teams trolley " "Evil_car_door_scratcher" went well they had to withdraw when there cart met an early demise due to budget cuts, when a wheel fell of in the parking lot due to it being installed backwards and then it drove in front of a SUV and was fatally destroyed. :-P
You know what would really be useful on shopping carts? Calculators.
It wouldn't even have to be good ones. If they duct taped $1 solar calculators to them, people could use them to figure out price per volume, how much they're paying, etc.
They're not fragile, and probably one of the more directly useful (without any specialization towards grocery stores, that is) pieces of technology for grocery store use.
I've lived in the Midwest US, and the SouthEast, and I can tell you that there are no major chains that even have calculators.
My guess is that the people making this know something that we don't. Perhaps a race of aliens is coming, and they consider grocery shopping the greatest form of entertainment in existence. Certainly better shopping cards will help keep certain companies in favor.
These inventors, for one, will welcome our new grocery-shopping overlords.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I am still waiting for a cart that will return itself to the store instead of running all over the parking lot.
"I see your shopping list contains two items that may be used in bomb making or for creating meth. Your local police department has been notified and will pick you up for questioning in five minutes.
We thank you for shopping here, and have a nice day!"
Ah, now even the hobos can be wireless, these are great times!
All you have to do is insert ten thousand quarters to unlock it from the rest of the carts out front!
I worked at Safeway for a bit during high school, I know how people mistreat the carts (its actually probably the staff's fault that the carts never drive straight!) So what happens with an expensive gadget cart?
It won't go mainstream too pricey. But it would hopefully make shopping suck less.
" We don't need to find the weapons of mass destruction we just need to want to find them, that's the way it works!
They have to make the geek man's shopping cart:
A cart that reads your shopping list on your USB key drive, then gives you the most efficient route to each ingredient, solving the Travelling Salesman problem once and for all (and make shopping a bit less of a chore for husbands everywhere!).
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
A friend in Europe told me that there's at least one supermarket in France where they have different colored carts which supposedly indicate your marital status - kind of like a "singles grocery store". If you're single and looking you have a different colored cart. As goofy as it sounds, it seems like an interesting way for people to meet. Can anyone confirm the existence of such a supermarket?
I already have a shopping buddy, and his name is Bonzai!
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
Bing in one, and for something truely frightful. Find out how much they really know about consumers and their behavours (more than you think).
I think my subject pretty much sums up my feelings. This sounds to me like one of the most annoying uses for technology I have heard about in a very long time.
I wonder if the person who invented those automated touch tone dialers that pass as customer service departments that I find so despicable had anything to do with this?
"I am still waiting for a cart that will return itself to the store instead of running all over the parking lot."
Is yours killing people?
consumers no longer have to decide what to buy.
phew! what a load off. As long as I fit into one of the predetermined categories, no more deciding what food to shop for, who to vote for, what toys to buy for my free time and what to watch on TV, my life is free!!!
But don't worry, if any of you don't fit yet into a category, listen to your politicians, watch those tv commercials and let that personal information flow through the corporate computers... there IS a spot waiting for you.
Thank for freedom where I don't have to make decisions anymore and I can live my life the way I want... freely!
How long until someone hacks it to run Linux?
I wonder if they will be manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
I'm an introvert. Just being at the store is about all the interactivity I want in a given day. Make it any more interactive and I'm going to need some quiet time afterwards!
Have already been Hacked.
......; done.
$3 Car RC attached to a $5 memo player slid into handlebars with messages, "buy" "you are overweight", "you don't need that", "not on special, full price", "other brand cheaper" and "I saw that" and "He's Cute" "computercart, thank you for shopping at
Before that - a walkie talkie, but they get suspicious&spotted too easilly. Best hidden on a "Customer Satisfaction" survey pad thingy, bolted onto the handlebars.
A UK firm fitted RC brakes to a trolley, causing trolley to erratically steer on demand - done. The funny aspect was seeing the reaction of another person taking it, after being rejected by the 1st, and it then steering flawlessly.
A US firm demonstrated that by playing German or French music, influenced the type of wine bought.
As for trolley return, Aldi's (.de) coin/chain system works.
Next time you shop, consider that the trolleys are never washed or wiped, and you observation of public restroom practices.
A clean, hygenic trolley, before a 'smart' one, is the real need here.
The state of Massachusetts just elected a state wide mayor??
"They will let shoppers email their shopping lists to the store"
What for? Something wrong with a hand-written list? Or even one typed then printed?
"... and check prices on the spot."
You mean, as opposed to just looking at the shelf, or the price ON the item? Unless this will let you check COMPETITORS prices (yeah right) I see no point.
"The computer will also alert shoppers as they approach favorite items or promotions."
Oh joy. So we get to the REAL point. Even more targeted advertising. Just what I always wanted.
It's sorta interesting to see how amazingly complex they make the act of buying a jug of milk. At present my local supermarket sells milk at about $4.00/gal. I also know the same milk is almost always onsale in the coupon book for 1/2 the price. I drink 1/2 gal daily and I easily save $300+ yearly. I hit the website before I hit the store and print off a coupon that won't scan (stupid jpg) and write a little note "web coupons don't scan blame them". Coupons are a total waste of time for both the consumer and the retailer. I only look for that milk coupon, I don't bother checking for anything else. However a Trader Joes will be opening near me, and they sell milk consistently for just slightly over $2.00/gal. Guess where I'll be buying my milk.
Now we have this smart-cart which I admit sounds like it has some nice features to it, but it mostly seems like a device designed to waste my time. I imagine this is no diffrent than any other medium, offing some great reward for taking the time to look at their crap. It would be nice if more stores would simply respect what consumers like my self want, which is to just freaking go in and buy stuff without any complex games with the prices.
Give me Trader Joes, give me Costco. Don't give me loyalty cards, don't give me targeted demographics, or captive advertising. Screw the marketing think tanks who's sole purpose in life is to convience me buying a coke will get women I hardly even know to give me a handjob.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Damn... 25 cents only used to get me a shopping cart. Now I get a laser scanner and touch screen!
Why do people keep trying this? It fails every time. Computers weren't meant to be everywhere.
Howdy.
I live in Massachusetts and Stop-n-Stop (the "Massachusetts supermarket chain") was beta testing these or something similar with select people a few years back. most of the time it takes you a while to realize and/or take advantage of the actual convenience. most people are either afraid or sick of being hassled by technology. anyway I think it's a waste of money. those new digital self-checkouts aren't any faster... but they get the user involved (removing boredom) and slow things down even further when idiots use them. plus they eliminate jobs. :\
VideOcart was part of Information Resources and tried this in 1989... burned through cash and went nowhere.
Every year or two I see postings about somebody trying the same thing....
"the computer will alert shoppers as they approach favorite items or promotions"
Don't worry about any embarassing situations here, guys, Slashdotters will never have to worry about the alerts when the cart reaches the condom section.
Though, make sure to bring the latest soundwave-cancellation gadgets and get ready to trigger it -- in case that the cart get too close to the Twinkies section and the microcontroller gets an overflow error and starts going alert-bonkers.
So it has a scanner, and I'm expected to scan everything in as I walk around.
There is no way this system will actually work without RFID - presonally I am far too lazy to wander around scanning everything I take off the shelves.
These things are just tablet computer things on the handlebars of the carts, and are encased in enough plastic to make them invulnerable to your 2 year old. And remember, this is from the company that makes industrial laptops for armies around the globe... the carts can get banged up all they want, I'm sure the computers will be just fine, and if they leave the store, something tells me they'll stop working and won't be a normal computer at all. :-)
Face it, supermarkets are low tech by design. You can't have anything that's even remotely fragile in an environment with foods, rushed people, kids, and low profit margins. Yes, the concepts seem good, but there's too much maintainence. A better idea would be to use GSM picocells. Use pre-existing cell phones and let people find products that way. There are lots of wap-enabled phones out there, why not use them for the display technology?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
frankly, I'm suprised that all the comments so far underestimate the company that supplies laptops to the australian army, and laptops with fingerprint identification, or the company that makes computers that can be dropped/kicked/blown up and still work.
from what I saw in the video, these things were removable from the cart, and wirelessly connected to the in-house IBM server for their intellegence. if they were taken away from the store, they stopped working and were relatively useless as computers.
so basically, they could go to a better cart if the cart broke, and they wouldn't really be very fun if someone stole them
And from the video I watched, the best part was not that they remembered your list, or that they let you place deli orders, or that they showed you coupons, but that you could scan items as you buy them and then walk straight through the checkout by just swiping your credit card! For the love of god, could you imagine how much money that could save in cashiers, and how much time that could save for those poor souls for whom the line is the longest part of their shopping trip?!
I don't know about you, but this just seems like the next step from those self-checkout things they have today. and these are a lot more helpful along the way as you shop.
if it makes my shopping experience at Stop&Shop in NY quicker and more pleasant, then I'll be happy to give up my tin-foil, cynical, slashdotter hat for some quick and easy zit-cream, beer, and potato chips.
Great, now we've found a way to outsource cashier work over to data entry jobs in India.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
As a Checkout boy, I wouldn't be able to help myself from stealing one of these carts and rip them apart at home ;)
And I doubt this would eventuate anyway because of Privacy Concerns, "History of favourite items" would ring alarms in any Privacy-concened persons' head. Those 'Fly Buys' cards are bad enough and not once person has ever asked about privacy concerns with those things when I'm serving someone.
Call me pessemistic, but these carts will become almost entirely marketing tools.
I can't see stores trying to help you purchase what's on your list, or getting you through the store more quickly.
If I go to the store to get toothpaste and detertergent, invariablly I'll end up with a few T-bone steaks (50% off!), some ketchup (the 80 oz bottle at 16oz bottle price!), some cereal (darn I walked down wrong aisle), and candy and cola (just cuz I never have enough).
It's in the stores best interest to make the items you want more difficult to find, while making items they want to get rid of easy to find with giant blinking lights and bright red "WOW" stickers.
Once the novelty wears off, stores will either dump the carts because impulse sales are down, or turn the carts into non-stop advertisers.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
In a mysterious event all shopping carts from all of Massachussets-based chain stores were gone.
Rumours are that this is related to a hack allowing
putting fully featured Linux distribution on such a cart. Authorities believe it is somehow related to something called "Beowulf cluster".
Bridging the digital divide. Yes!
and pulls out a shotgun, I'm sure that the cart will give a helpful warning, and then after they blow the cart away, the PA system will inform everyone.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
if you've ever used their self-checkout, it's pretty weak - it's far too complicated compared to at least two other new england retailers' methods - it uses a very tricky light sensor chain to track purchases as they go to the bagging area, and the bagging area is too easy to fill. Ther is pitiful integration between the touch screen that you use for most thngs and the debit/credit card reader - the whole thing was patched together - there is no flow or path of the things you'll need to use - cash receiver, change slot, pin buttons, etc... the touch screen asks what sort of card you're using then the card reader does too - a giant red x usually means cancel what i'm doing, but at chas back time it means no cash back and there's a cancel button.
It's too much like trying to learn the macarena during the wedding reception.
Point being, if they do this like the did self-checkout, they're in for a bumpy ride.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
>> The computer will also alert shoppers as they
>> approach favorite items or promotions."
... will it alert you that there's that hot chick from last week on the next aisle over ??
Yes, shopping *could* be more fun... :^)
Be the envy of the other homeless people with your new pimped ride ;-)
Am I going to have to have valid ID, credit card, and make a deposit just so i can use a grocery cart now? Becuase I know people are going to steal them (or break off the good parts).
From the picture it seems they have also made an invisible button for the device.
------
insert sig here,here, and here
Verify pricing at the shelf? HA HA HA.
The last thing the grocery store wants is accurate pricing. Shelf product is merchandised in such a way as to make the shopper think he is getting a sale item when in fact he isn't. THE LARGE PRINT GIVETH and the small print taketh away.
It takes state LAW to get these people to put prices on the product rather than just on the shelf. They don't want you remembering the shelf pricewhen you get to the register. Just to add to the confusion the shelf prices are ambiguous and one needs a magnifying glass to see exactly which obscure sized package the sale price refers to.
Make a generic list. (meat, milk, bread, coffee, vegetables)
Look for what's on sale that fits the list.
Carefully compare shelf tag to item!
Write it down.
After checkout compare notes to receipt.
If the store is consistantly wrong by 10% or more of dollar value, it is NOT an accident, it's FRAUD! And it's the semi-literate and elderly who are getting screwed. Ditzy folks get screwed too but they don't seem to mind.
It seems that no matter where you live that some shopping carts always end up on the side of the road somewhere or something along those lines.
Now as others in this thread have pointed out this whole deal has basically nothing to do with the customers experience and everything to do about filling up more databases to sell to manufactures.
My question is will the cost of a) buying and maintaining, b) preventing theft/vandalism, and c) ensuring that they give accurate data be enough to cover whatever profit margin they hope to obtain?
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
and a PDA tray built on to the cart makes more sense. You make your list at home on your PDA. You scan the bar codes with your PDA. You compare to database that you downloaded from the store on your PDA.
At our local Kroger.. It was a non-backlit LCD screen + touch pad mounted on the 'handle' of the cart.About 8" or so..
It showed the stores 'map', had a calculator, and would often spit out annoying ads as you went down specific isles...
They also screamed for help ( ok ok, they started beeping ) if you went too far from the store.. Presumably to prevent theft.. However the poor quality of the display pretty much did that anyway.
They ran them for about a year, then disappeared.. Ahead of their time perhaps?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
teenagers are joy-riding me in the parking lot! They're heading for the drainage ditch! Help! Help! Hel---" [Message terminated.]
By eliminating baggers, they can afford to not raise the prices storewide by 1/2 a cent, as they normally would have done. Now 'lower' prices, just not raise them. You get to pocket that 1/2 cent per item as payment. Which is about right. 50 items in your cart, 25 cents. It takes maybe 2 minutes to bag, so you're getting paid $15/hr to bag your own stuff.
I used to work at a grocery store that had calculators on every cart. Guess what? They were removed because people weren't spending enough!
Excellent point. This sort of thing appears ONLY because the retailer believes it will make them more money, by making you spend more. It is NOT for your convenience, and will disappear or be modified the instant it becomes apparent that people are using it to *reduce or control* their spending.
Between a dollar store calculator and a paper and pencil, one has all the technology one needs to go to the grocery store.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Slashdot reported on this previously, when the Boston Globe did an article on it last October.
...just a simple PDA tray you clip your PDA or notebook to and that is designed to clip to generic shopping cart handles? Some sort of cheap aftermarket acessory.
They might exist already for that matter, I've never looked.
Explosion, Aisle-9.
...development of robots was being kept under close observation. Intelligent machines that could play pool and walk on water, or assist you in navigation and even care for the elderly were coming out at a much faster rate.
But in a quiet corner, it was the lowly Roomba and the shopping carts that were secretly plotting the annihilation of the human race.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
>You know what would really be useful on shopping >carts? Calculators.
I remember seeing solar powered calculator built
into the handle of shopping carts in a supermarket
(Acme?) in Pennsylvania. It also had a printed
advertisement next to the keyboard.
To partially steal an idea from another poster:
Compact web pages (like designed for a PDA's compact screen) that frontend the stock database over wireless (1Mbit is fine so the store gets more bandwidth for the buck at the AP). If a customer needs to find something, they just make a query, or if a customer needs a price, they make a different query. They just buy a USB UPC bar reader from the store and be done. This way nothing too expensive can get stolen from the store, and the initial cost is very low.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
So....anyone want to try to upgrade the firmware
on these things wirelessly to play Doom (1) on
them?
Yeah, this is OT, but I just love telling this story, so ...
There was a market here in Houston some years ago that got in some new, stupid management who managed to drive the place out of business. Under the old management, the store maintained a huge excess of shopping carts. The people in the poor surrounding neighborhood didn't have cars, so they'd use the carts to push their purchases all the way back home. The store hired a team to drive around the neighborhood with a pickup truck towing a low flatbed trailer. Those guys would gather up the carts and return them to the store. Everybody was happy.
New management comes in and freaks out. "These poor people are stealing our carts!" They set up speed bumps at the parking lot entrances and put disablers on the shopping carts so that if you lifted the front of the cart over the bump, a rod woud drop out of the front of the cart and prevent it from being rolled. Soon, people figured out that if they taped the rods in place, they could get the carts out of the parking lot.
Management responded with abusive security guards and calling the police. A number of ugly confrontations happened, completely poisoning the relationship between this store and the community. Eventually, management put up crash barrier poles in a small circle around the entrance to the store. The space between them was so narrow, you couldn't get a cart through them. If you had a load of groceries, you'd have to have a family member watch your cart while you went to go get the car, bring it to the front, and load out your groceries.
Finally, the new management had found a way to keep those pesky poor people from stealing their carts. Unfortunately for them, those pesky poor people were the majority of their customers. Those customers started walking a much further distance to another store that wasn't run by idiots. Add to this the traffic jam at the store entrance, the short tempers this caused, and it just got to the point where people didn't want to deal with the stress of shopping at that store, even if it was the only conveniently located full-size grocery store for several neighborhoods. People literally started carpooling to other markets and a secondary market in unlicensed taxis grew up to meet their needs. Basically, anybody in the surrounding apartment complexes who had a car could put up a note in the laundry advertising when they would be making runs to the grocery store and fill their car with passengers who'd pay 2 or 3 bucks to ride along.
The phrase "penny-wise and pound-foolish" comes to mind.
Anyway, I'm reminded of this story because, somehow, to me, a shopping cart should be something to carry groceries. It just seems oddly wrong that people try to use shopping carts to carry advertising, computers, or to enforce their ability to control the actions of their customers.
When you try to bolt and run, it zaps you with :)
electricity to stun you while robotic shackles come out of the control panel and attach to your wrists. It's also equipped with one of
those "electronic boot" devices to prevent theft
(like at some Ralphs stores here in Califronia
which engages. The screen pops a message saying
"you have resisted arrest, the police have been
notified of your violation". It then begins
snapping photos of you while choking you with tear
gas.
There's also a simaler cart with a baby seat that
locks your kid inside, and wizzes away to the
nearest CPS office should you dare utter a single
word of profanity (like at a really long checkout line).1
The one that was ahead of time was the VideOcart which was a way pre-Internet-boom 1980s startup company where I worked. They used the monochrome LCD displays that the laptops of time had. Ahead of its time? It had a text/graphics display pre WWW! It had wireless connectivity pre WiFi!
The system had infrared sensors in the aisles so the cart knew where it was in the store. You could search for an item and it would give you directions to the shelf it was on and guide you on the map. It would offer recipes. As you walked it would show you an electronic coupon for an item in that aisle. Imagine the technical problem of the cart having to see what checkout aisle you were using so it could tell the POS system to give you the coupon discount IF you bought the item. It worked well.
It recorded where the cart went through the store. We could look at the playback of the track and guess which customer had a shopping list and which (men!) wandered around looking for stuff.
One of the things the supermarket owner customers insisted that it NOT have was a calculator that allowed the customer to know how much they were buying. They don't want the customer to stop throwing stuff in the basket.
The problem was the major advertisers didn't want to pay for it and the supermarkets didn'tt want to pay for it, so they went bankrupt.
You may still run into the VideOcarts on golf carts. One company bought the inventory and made it so you could see the golf course layout and order drinks.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
First of all, this is amazingly old news. Stop & Shop has had these in at least 3 stores for over a year now, though the larger roll-out is new.
Beyond that, I see a lot of "Why bother? What a waste!" comments. Maybe you should actually give it a try first, if possible. It's certainly interesting, and it might even be helpful for at least some shoppers - I used it and enjoyed it, though I didn't go back to use it again (out of the way). As for it being wasteful, I can think of MANY more wasteful uses of technology than this - having my supermarket remind me that I'm probably low on milk isn't the worst thing in the world, and having my shopping cart tell me when I'm near (within about 10 feet) the bread that's on sale that I wanted it to remind me about is great. It's also great for weird or hard-to-find items.
You can read about my personal experience with the Shopping Buddy here.
Do a little research into how grocery stores make money.
It's an extremely competitive business, because almost everything they are selling is a commodity (you can buy identical product down the street). The general shelves don't bring in much money per square foot (at least in product sales). They do get money by charging manufacturers for the prime locations-- an example of this is that I walked into my local large chain grocery store one day and the shelf that normally held all of the premium tuna now held.....premium SPAM! Yeah, the stuff by Hormel. My hand was halfway to the shelf before I saw it was Spam and leapt back in horror. Hormel probably forked over some big $$ for that space. It works the same with cereals, toilet paper, munchies, whatever.
The other place they make money is the point of purchase stands. They bring in substantially more per square foot than the general shelves.
Wasn't it IBM that had a TV commercial (for their business services) a few years ago that showed a manager and a stock clerk putting stuff on the shelves and the stock clerk asking why they were putting some low markup weird thing in a prominent place? The manager replied that people who bought the low markup thing all also bought some high markup fancy thing. The collaborative filtering that consumers provide (via grocery stores) to the producers is probably much more valuable than things like focus groups, and probably costs less to generate. They can track everything that sells and where the correlations are, so you don't get "ooh, that's neat" and then nobody ever buys it again. Why do you think club cards have such big savings sometimes? They really want to be able to correlate your behavior across all visits so that they can get better "people who buy x also buy y" data.
... a replicator in my house.
"Tea, Earl Grey, hot."
Usually you want to come up with new products, use of technology etc when there is a problem to solve. I hadn't heard much about problems with grocery shopping. Is that complicated a process that we need to come up with lameness like this??
Over-engineering at its finest.
When I was moving out of my apartment this summer, I had the luck to find a shopping cart nearby my building whose wheel-governor had been magically disengaged. Since this would be useful for rolling my copious heavy boxes from my apartment to the elevator and to the moving vehicle, I snagged it. When I got home, I removed the ads in the little frame on the front of the cart and put in new inserts. On the front of the cart:
IN SOVIET RUSSIA,
CART PUSHES YOU!!
On the inside of the cart, "All your base are belong to us!!"
Somewhere in San Francisco, my cart is still sitting around amusing/confusing passersby.
Robo-Kid-Similation mode - the cart randomly yanks products off the shelves and puts them in the cart when you aren't looking.
Patented "Second-Chance" Customer Assistance Technology(TM) - the cart follows you out to your car, reminding you about stuff you may have forgotten to buy.
No, they'll just look intelligent compared to the staff.
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
CAN'T YOU SEE THAT THIS IS JUST A TOOL MADE BY THE GOVERNMENT? THEY'RE GOING TO USE TRACKING CHIPS TO CONTROL US AS WE SHOP! WHAT'S NEXT!? EVERYONE RISE AGAINST THIS HIDEOUS DEVICE! DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER! sorry guys, I had to do it. Realistically though, this sounds like a very good idea. Definitely a step up from my normal routine of nomadically wandering around the store for 3 hours and thinking, "That looks good...". I end up with 20 packages of Oreos and some chicken noodle soup.
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
Sounds like the ones from the Future Store - a project in germany.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Except when you're in the Chicagoland area. At our local grocers, the product placement and layout is horrible:
- The jelly is next to the fruit juices, presumably because they're both fruit products.
- The english muffins are next to the cereal in the breakfast aisle.
- The coffee, however, is in the soup aisle, where you will also find outmeal next to the ramen noodles (both products require adding water...)
- The peanut butter is next to the marinara in the dinner aisle, apparently because it is considered a 'sauce'
- Salsa is split between two aisles - there's the good, Mexican salsa in the 'ethnic foods' aisle, and the American salsa in the junk food aisle next to the tortilla chips. But, you won't find the authentic Mexican tortilla chips in the 'ethnic foods' aisle - they're in the junk food aisle next to the Tostitos.
- You might think you'd find lunchmeat next to the ground beef, or even next to the cheeses, but you'd be wrong. It's on the other side of the store next to the yogurt and frozen foods.
-
And speaking of dairy, apparently yogurt isn't considered a dairy product - it's on the far end of the refigerators, next to the frozen foods.
I'll spare you the rest, but when you've got 33 aisles of food arranged by an anal-retentive idiot, you'd appreciate having a cart tell you where things are.The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This reminds me of taking my favorite piece of software to the grocery store. I'll give you guys a few hints. Its big Its Purple Its annoying Its a gorrilla Give up?
This is a great way to get technology into the hands of those who wouldn't normally be able to afford it.
No, seriously, do you think they'll be equiped with GPS trackers in case of theft?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
the krogers here in atlanta had a very similar device years ago back in the early 90s to assist in shopping. It consisted of an LCD with a touchpad attached to the front of the cart, with an index of the entire store's inventory on screen. As you would pass by the row, it would show items onscreen and show what was on sale. Also, you could do an item lookup for troublesome items by name or category, and it would show a small map of the store with the row that the item could be found on. Does anyone else remember these shopping carts? I distincly remember playing with them in my youth, as my mother was horrible with technology (she still is now lol) and used it to locate items throughout the store. From what I remember, they weren't quite weatherproof and ran low on batteries. After awhile, the units ceased to function and disappeared from the area kroger stores all together.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Just like the lo tech ones...
Yee HAW!!!! http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/07/shopping_cart _modded.html/
What's so evil about that?
Maybe the fact that they purposely mark up the prices in order to be able to offer you that FAKE discount?
Your savings are a sham.