Media

The Cart with Attitude

Ever wander through a supermarket trying to figure out where they’re hiding the soy sauce?
New technology, integrating small computers and wireless technology will easily find you the answer. 
Companies are field testing computers on grocery carts, with the goal of making shopping quicker and more satisfying. They’re also seeinga it as a way to ply customers with more advertising, and to give them a targeted message.

Concierge, produced by Springboard Retail Networks Inc., of King City, Ontario and the Shopping Buddy, produced by IBM were on display at last spring’s Food Marketing Institute Show in Chicago. Concierge was also on display at the Grocery Innovations Canada trade show recently in Toronto.

Here’s what the system will allow you to do. From your home computer, you can upload, or select your shopping list. Then, when you get to the store, you log into the system on the shopping cart, connected to a central computer by a wireless network. It will then allow you to scan individual items and keep a running total of your purchases. Another option would allow you to put your list on one of those little USB drives and plug it in once at the store. Your list will be there, along with suggested purchases, based on your past preferences, what is on sale and likely what the company wishes you would buy.

The computer can also help guide you to that elusive bottle of soy sauce.

Finding individual items is a large pet peeve of consumers - it’s a big time waster. You have to hate realizing that the bagels are actually at the other end of the store. Add to that the absense of employees to guide you, and the ability to quickly locate an item would be useful.

Or, you could just wander the aisles and the computer will tell you what’s on sale in that aisle as you go by. I wonder what that could do to the grocery cart accident rate as time-strapped consumers rush down the aisle eyes fixed to their grocery carts.

There’s some enticement to doing away with the ratty shopping list in your pocket, but the system is really about developing that gold mine of retail data - the personal profile. That generates advertising and advertising the company knows will make you care because it can be targeted to you.

The whole model is driven by advertisers’ need to get in front of consumers," said Springboard spokesman Michael Alexandor in media reports. "They’re not watching 30-second TV ads anymore."