The electronic supermarket trolley

A new kind of electronic trolley may soon be making its way to your supermarket. The idea is to use RFID technology to enable, to be honest, increased sales for the retailer. It may also help the consumer to get more out of the “shopping experience”.

RFID stands for radio-frequency identification, and is increasingly being used by retailers to handle goods. Bar codes have to be scanned by a machine at say the checkout or else by someone patrolling the aisles. This is labour intensive, hence the encouragement by many supermarkets to get shoppers doing the scanning themselves, either at a special checkout or by using a handheld device. RFID tags on goods offer an alternative.

Generally speaking, the technology involves either a passive system, where the user can “read” data on goods by sending a wi-fi message which is replied to, or an active system, where the goods themselves send messages (such as saying that a food item is past its sell by date). A big problem is that the technology has to get cheaper in order for usage to be widespread on all save expensive goods.
What the new Media-Cart by Media Cart Holdings, a Texan company, proposes is altering the conventional shopping trolley by adding a screen at the far end of the trolley, placed so that the user can easily see it. There is also an RFID tag on the trolley itself so that the system knows where the trolley is at any given moment in the store: this is called “locationing”.

The screen can display advertisements such as special offers for goods that are near the location of the trolley. This is based partly on the previous buying pattern of the shopper. It also displays a map which shows where the trolley is at the time within the supermarket, and which shows the location of the special offer. It would also show where say the yogurt is kept if the user asks. Quite literally asks: the user presses a button, asks a question, and a voice recognition system then responds by altering the data on the map to show the quickest route to get to the goods. I suspect that this is a part of the system that would not work very well, as the trolley would not be adjusted to a person’s own accent and so on.

Having found the item, the user scans the bar code on it and the title appears on the screen, perhaps with nutritional information as well. A shopping list could also appear on the screen based on the previous buying habits of the shopper.

There is also a “phone home” facility, where if the trolley is abandoned outside the supermarket it can call in reporting its location. Presumably this works only if it is not taken too far away.

All this is among the exhaustive detail in the 134 pages of my Patent of the Month, WO 2007/002941, “Media enabled advertising shopping cart system”

Adding to the slightly Orwellian feel of the invention, a spokesman for the company says that “the cart’s traffic patterns and shopper interactions are recorded”. The software, says the press release, is by Microsoft who are collaborating in the innovation.

The summary provided by the company on the front page of the patent specification makes for interesting reading:

The present disclosure is aimed to address needs of advertisers, retailers, and consumers. Advertisers wish to 1) display ads at the most effective location and time, at the consumer's point of purchase, 2) specifically measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, and 3) improve return on advertisement investment dollars. Retailers wish to 1) increase sales, 2) share in advertising revenue, 3) reduce labor costs, 4) create a consumer friendly environment with less advertisement clutter, 5) enhance their store image and 6) make improvements that are compatible with existing solutions. Consumers wish to 1) have a pleasant and efficient shopping experience, and 2) save money on items that they need or want.

A nine month trial of the system began in Spring 2007 in the ShopRite stores in New Jersey. One of the appeals, surely, is the opportunity to recognise people’s spending habits (those good old loyalty cards) so that they can be targeted with specific advertising.

Scott Ferris of Microsoft’s Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group is quoted as saying “In working with companies like MediaCart, we’re continuing to push the envelope in the digital advertising realm to enable new and innovative ways for advertisers and agencies to create brand loyalty and engage with their target audiences in a highly relevant, measurable and targeted way. Digital advertising opportunities are expanding rapidly into new areas, as many of consumers’ daily activities, such as shopping, become increasingly ‘connected’”.  

That probably says it all. More information about the MediaCart can be found at their website, http://www.mediacart.com.

Our Patent of the Month is provided courtesy of Steve Van Dulken from the British Library.  Steve is a patent specialist at the British Library and has his own blog at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/patentsblog/

Steve has worked since 1987 as a patents librarian at the British Library. Author of Inventing the American Dream, Inventing the 19th century and Inventing the 20th century, both popular science, and of British patents of invention, 1617-1977: a guide for researchers and editor of Introduction to patents information.