Over a decade ago, trade journals were talking about smart grocery carts. These grocery carts would have a computer attached to it that could assist consumers in shopping by providing coupons, the location of an item the shopper wants to buy, and even an accelerated check out process if the shopper scanned the items into the cart. Meanwhile, the smart cart would allow the retailer to generate detailed data on their shoppers buying behavior, details of how customers moved through the store, and other useful information that could be used to increase store sales.
For the purpose of segmenting shoppers, grocery is the ideal retail vertical. We are almost all prodigious consumers of grocery items. A year’s worth of shopping data can lead to intelligent segmentations of customers. In contrast, most of us buy cars or washing machines only rarely. A year’s worth of data would be meaningless.
Smart carts were experimented with by various grocery chains, but have never come into general usage. Perhaps computers in carts was never realistic in an industry with such thin margins.
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