News

Hand-held scanners take the self-checkout experience to the aisles

May 3, 2005

New York Times: The checkout line is always a drag.

Grocery stores have tried to make the experience easier for shoppers with the introduction of the self-checkout counter or avoiding the scene altogether through online shopping, but mostly, buying groceries has changed little: push a cart up and down the aisles, then wait in line to pay at the front of the store.

For several years, technology companies have been promising that a wireless revolution would change all that. When every item in a store carries a tiny radio tag, your cartload of groceries will almost shout their prices to the cash register when you approach, allowing you to whisk through. But that revolution is taking longer than anticipated.

Yet in a few stores in Chicago and around the Dallas-Fort Worth region run by Albertsons Inc., the large grocery chain, a simpler method is already in use. It amounts to letting shoppers tote a cash register around the store with them, in the form of a wireless scanner that shoppers can use to ring up their own groceries as they take them off the shelf.

Called Shop 'n' Scan, Albertsons has big plans for the technology, and so far is leading the pack in the supermarket industry in using such scanners. Eventually, the company wants to integrate it with other services to help people plan their shopping list, putting an end to the forehead smack that comes with remembering on the way out of the parking lot that some crucial purchase was forgotten.

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