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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."
I bet the homeless people will be happy.
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!
I agree. The only thing a computer on a cart could do for me would be to be able to locate specific items. For instance, Jalapeno peppers are located with Mexican food in some stores, pickles in others, and chips and dip in others. It would be nice to be able to find an item by hitting a few keys instead of trying to find a clerk. It would also be nice if it had a calculator so I can figure the best deal when store labels aren't in uniform units. (For instance, some meats in oz, other in lbs.)
Of course, the marketing-types will corrupt this to point folks in a certain direction, with ad revenue coming in for specific items. A search for jalepenos might yield "Microsoft Jalapenos are on Aisle 4, in the Special Purchase Department. They are on Sale for $2.59 for a 5 oz. Jar, saving you seventy five cents off of their normal price" and ignoring the better buys on commodity items (16oz jar of Acme jalepenos for $1.49 in aisle 5 with the pickles).
Or maybe I am just pessimistic, and marketing folks really have our best interests at heart. After all, aren't Golgafrin...er, marketing professionals valuable and intelligent members of our society?
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.
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.
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.
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'd be happy with this scenario:
-Go to the grocery store's website.
-Pick out all of the items I would like to purchase (prices listed).
-Recieve an order number.
-Go to the store.
-Enter order number into shopping cart.
-Shopping list (sorted by location) is displayed on an LCD attached to cart and items are stricken as they are placed in the cart.
That would be the end of browsing around and spending 5 mins trying to decide whether you really need that twin-pack of Spam or not.
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!
When I go shopping, I just go shopping. I would not bother making a list,
It's been shown that people who don't make lists pay about 30% more for the same items as people who do.
If thats acceptable to you compared to spending 10 minutes keeping a list....then power to you.
It also means that you are the Ideal walmart shopper. Someone who wanders in with an item in mind and sees low prices on the front stuff but doesn't see the jacked up prices on the other stuff. In the end most people spend more at walmart than they would otherwise because of not sticking to a list.
food for thought.
They are already employed here in Belgium; you can pick up your barcode scanner and scan in all your items while your shop. On checkout the computer reads your total from the scanner, and you pay for whatever you've scanned. A "random check" is generated by the computer so you never know when your items are scanned in at the registers so you wouldn't carry out more then you scanned.
It's pretty neato.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Why do YOU need a computer when people are suffering? To take that further, why do you need a house, clothing, a car, a job, a grocery store, a bank, or anything else when there is someone else out there going without those things?
The answer is quite simple. BECAUSE WE CAN.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.