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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!
Alerting the homeless person who just stole the cart when they are coming upon an empty cardboard box.
...and yet they still can't make them go straight when you push 'em.
I like gadgets as much as the next geek, but isn't this a little absurd? Grocery shopping is not that difficult, people.
"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
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.
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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!!!!!
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http://www.skoopy.com/show2.php?id=755&type=VI D/
First off, I'm a HCI major, and I've worked on designing human factors related stuff.
Now, leave everything else - this is simply pointless.
When I go shopping, I just go shopping. I would not bother making a list, e-mailing it them and what not. They forget the human-factors part of it - people will not go to the lengths to do something like this (atleast I won't). These are the same people who find it hard to move their mice up 2 cms to click a button - they're actually going to go to this lengths to do this?
NO WAY.
And usually, when I visit the supermarket, I go in a specific order that I'm used to. As and when I go through the things, I look at what I need to buy and buy it -- it's something that my brain is used to. And people who're used to writing lists, will continue to write lists and strike them off. This new fangled way is just asking for too much effort on the part of the user.
Man, why do they try and throw technology to each and every problem? As though it's a panacea of some sort.
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
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.
What's so new? isn't that what "club cards" were for?
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
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
Yeah, i use the handbaskets too. Living by myself, there's little need to buy much more than would require a handbasket. I really hope all stores don't go to this. I just don't see this really making anyone's life better. And how about instead of all these fancy "improvements" to shopping, they just gave us more choice and lower prices? Or is that harder to advertise? -Bill
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 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!
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 ~$70 worth of groceries.
30 minutes later, nothing really resolved, because there was nothing apparently wrong with the machine and no alarms went off as I bagged my groceries that went through the belt, they let me go despite all evidence pointing towards my guilt.
The next time I checked myself out and paid with cash & debit I got no receipt. I didn't say anything, and I don't pay with cash & debit anymore.
Now I have way to know when I'm approaching my favorite items!
Before, I had to rely on blind luck. I would run into the supermarket, eyes clos...hey wait a minute!!
I'VE GOT EYES!!!!!! I just forgot to open them all this time!
Problem solved!
Seriously, the more I learn about technology, the more I believe it should be kept FAR AWAY FROM PEOPLE.
In the old days, the lay people would be afraid of technology and what it might do to impact their lives negatively, while the scientists and smart people tried to explain the benefits.
Now it's the other way around.. lay people just LOVE all this crap, and the smart people are going, "uhm, you know when your email goes BING every five seconds and you go to check it, that actually makes you LESS productive even though you are BUSIER?" and "yes, that bluetooth feature is cool, but did you know that I just downloaded your whole contact list, including the speed-dial entry for 1-800-GRANNY-GASH?" and "actually, electronic voting machines DO run on the same version of windows that you use" and so on and so on....
1. Increase overhead astronomically.
2. ???
3. Profit!
1. Are they weatherproof? Will they go berserk from leaving them in the rain?
2. You can now get your car dinged by a shopping cart that costs around the same or more than some used cars.
3. Will the homeless have to pay property tax on a shopping cart that costs so much!
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
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.
"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!"
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?
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?
You know what would really be useful on shopping carts? Calculators.
Even better, barcode scanners that read out the price of each item in your cart and keep a running total. It'd be nice to catch the pricing "errors" before you get the the checkout stand.
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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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. :\
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.
I'd even be happier if at this point, you show up at a drive-up area, swipe your credit card, and your order is loaded in your car for you.
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
Those are _my_ opinions based on my experience.
*shrug*
It's not like am offering my professional opinon on Slashdot. Those were personal statements, nothing more.
Get a life.
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
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.
When do you mention a pricing error in your favor?
As a person who used to work at a convenience store in college and ran inventory, I guess I just know better.
As for "in their favor", that's why most stores don't tag everything individually anymore. Besides the obvious labor cost (especially when you want to re-price), you be the guy on the other end arguing with 10+ customers a day about price tags, especially when you know damn well 6 or 7 of them swapped tags to save 20 cents. I'm sorry, but not everyone is as honest as you and I and it happens more often than you think.
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.
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E-shopping disturbs me: "Other people who have baught duct tape have also baught XXL dustbin bags, Shogun kitchen knives and airifles"
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the definition from the book. thats great. thats the difference between a course and real life. companies want to convince customers what they need and that they need a lot of it.
i was working for a large, large consumer goods company where one of their VPs said to me, "there is food we produce to eat and food we produce to sell" while looking at a can of mini-franks (cocktail franks).
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!
... I'd say that the main goal of marketing is to satisfy customer needs, not push ads down everyone's throat. The defenition from the book says that marketing is "a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others"
I took a bunch of marketing courses on the way to my MBA. When you start looking at things from the executive level, things work a bit differently. The goal of a corporation is to return value to its investors. Marketing allegedly supports this function by ensuring that the right Product is sold at the right Price at the right Place with the right Promotion to maximize profit. The customers' needs and desires are only considered from the point of how they can be used to maximize profit.
Many corporations are weak in Marketing, but don't realize it. They try to use Promotion to offset Product, Placement, or Price weaknesses. The Marketing department may not even have the authority to have input on placement, price, or product, leaving only promotion for them to work with. Or, they may be incompetent in areas other than promotion. (I've met more than one of those.) Consequently, we get ads jammed down our throats, since the Marketing folks can do little else.
Or, I could be wrong, and the few marketing folks I met were exceptions, and the marketing screwups I have observed were cases where Marketing didn't really have an input, and the best and brightest go into marketing, not the cool people who are just good at (self) promotion.
Yup, more than 10 years ago =)
Back in 92, I worked for a company called VideoCart who was probably the supplier for the screens you're refer to.
These carts did everything mentioned in the article, with the exception of email.
Although it *seemed* a good concept, the public never caught on.
The project lasted several months in the store I maintained up in Sacramento, but it was pulled within a year due to a lack of public interest. Most people back then would just grab one of the non-equipped carts. Perhaps the concept will be better received now that the general public is more open to technology in general.
The beeping distress calls didn't do much to save them from becoming a decoration in someone's living room either. We had numerous carts go missing, but very few were ever recovered. And they made a tempting target for vandals. I'd say that on average, we were replacing at least 2 smashed LCD screens per week.
Linux user since 1994!