Want to go to the grocery store, get your items, and then go straight home without having to stop at the checkout lane? That's the premise behind a new initiative by Microsoft (MSFT) and Wakefern Food Corp.'s ShopRite supermarkets.
Dubbed "MediaCart," a console will be mounted on a grocery cart which will aid consumers in finding their products, scanning, and then paying for them without having to having to go through the process of checking out.
ShopRite, which is located on the East Coast, has a loyalty card system which will be the foundation for the technology to work from. Those customers using the cards will be able to go to a Web site on their home computer and enter in their grocery list; when they get to the store all they do is swipe the card on the grocery cart console and the list appears. As they go through the store and put the items in the cart, they are able to see the total add up while it also checks the items off your list. Pretty slick.
When you're finished, you just walk out the door and bring your items to your vehicle.
Another valuable addition is the ability of the technology to send ads to shoppers via the console when they go down a certain aisle. If a vendor has a product with a coupon for 75 cents off, they could have the information sent to the consumer as they enter the aisle where it's located. This is because the system also uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) with it.
Commercials will evidently be part of the overall operation as well, although how they will be delivered on the shopping cart console is still being worked on.
"This is not all necessarily about bombarding consumers, about targeting advertising," said Scott Ferris, general manager of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions group. "It's about also making the shopping experience better for the consumer."
The privacy of consumers using the loyalty card program of ShopRite will have their personal information protected when joining the program, although general habits gathered from the data will be used to help learn more about customer patterns and interaction with ads and coupons.
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