Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Supermarkets: High-Tech Hotbeds

Posted by samzenpus on from the lettuce-technology dept.

Esther Schindler writes "You don't think of your supermarket as the source of geeky innovation, but you may be surprised. For example, in Steven Cherry's Supermarkets Are High-Tech Hotbeds, a Techwise Conversation with Kurt Kendall, a partner and director at Kurt Salmon, where he heads the analytics practice there, we learn: 'A lot of supermarket tech is at the checkout area. Bar-code scanning was already old hat when U.S. president George Bush the elder was allegedly amazed by them in 1992, and retailers continue to experiment with the next logical step: self-checkout systems. There's a lot of technologies out there right now that are being introduced into the retail space to understand what consumers are doing in the store, and heat-mapping is one of those technologies--using cameras in the ceiling to actually track where the consumer's going. What this information tells the retailer is where a consumer is, how they're moving around the store, whether they're dwelling in certain places, like checkout or in front of specific merchandise."

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. How much tech for a nickel? by justthinkit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How much tech can you have in an industry with profit margins of 1 or 2%?

    --
    I come here for the love
    1. Re:How much tech for a nickel? by ArcherB · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How much tech can you have in an industry with profit margins of 1 or 2%?

      1% of a lot of money is still a lot of money. Businesses that do more business can afford to take smaller profit margins because they deal with such larger volumes. For example, a convenience store that does $10,000 worth of business over a weekend won't make it on 1% profit. That's a mere $100. But a grocery store that does $1,000,000 over that same weekend will do just fine on the same 1% as that is $10,000 profit.

      $10,000 buys a lot more technical investment than $100.

      --
      There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
  2. How supermarkets get your data – and what t by auric_dude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It doesn't matter if you are part of a loyalty scheme, pay by card or even cash, 'Big Brother' supermarkets know your every move http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jun/08/supermarkets-get-your-data