Wheeling Into the Future
RFID-enabled shopping carts can benefit retailers and consumers.
By Mary Catherine O'Connor
Why is there a traffic jam in aisle three? What's on sale? And where are all the shopping carts? Now smart shopping carts, fitted with RFID tags and interrogators, are giving retailers new insights into the shopping habits of their customers, while making shopping less of a chore for consumers.
Media Cart Holdings, a retail marketing company, developed an RFID shopping system that's a marketing tool for consumer packaged goods companies and a way for grocery stores to improve shoppers' experiences. ShopRite, a Northeast grocery chain, is currently testing the system at two of its New Jersey supermarkets.
Each shopping cart is outfitted with a ThingMagic 4E RFID interrogator, a power supply and a color monitor. The store shelves are fitted with passive EPC Gen 2 tags from Avery Dennison. As a shopper moves down an aisle, the cart reads the IDs encoded onto the tags and sends them via the store's Wi-Fi network to a central MediaCart database, which sends commands back to the cart's monitor to play select video advertisements.
Why is there a traffic jam in aisle three? What's on sale? And where are all the shopping carts? Now smart shopping carts, fitted with RFID tags and interrogators, are giving retailers new insights into the shopping habits of their customers, while making shopping less of a chore for consumers.
Media Cart Holdings, a retail marketing company, developed an RFID shopping system that's a marketing tool for consumer packaged goods companies and a way for grocery stores to improve shoppers' experiences. ShopRite, a Northeast grocery chain, is currently testing the system at two of its New Jersey supermarkets.
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| The MediaCart wagon can tell shoppers about special promotions and help them locate items in the store. |
Each shopping cart is outfitted with a ThingMagic 4E RFID interrogator, a power supply and a color monitor. The store shelves are fitted with passive EPC Gen 2 tags from Avery Dennison. As a shopper moves down an aisle, the cart reads the IDs encoded onto the tags and sends them via the store's Wi-Fi network to a central MediaCart database, which sends commands back to the cart's monitor to play select video advertisements.
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