RFID-Enabled Cart Set to Provide Shoppers With Product Info, Ads

Once all the features become available, shoppers will be able to log onto a store's Web site, input a shopping list and receive an ID number. They can then provide that number to the media cart at the time of shopping, and the cart will list the items in order of their placement throughout the store. It can also recommend recipes, list the products needed for those recipes and direct shoppers to their location in the store. The customers can then opt to receive the recipes via e-mail.

Jon Kramer

Additionally, the cart has a built-in bar-code scanner allowing shoppers to scan items while putting them in the cart. This is intended to spare them from having to wait in line at checkout while a cashier rings up each item. In the case of produce or deli items, stores would have to install printers to their scales so customers could weigh an item, print the weight and price on a bar-code label and scan the label at the cart.

As a shopper completes the process and leaves the store, the cart says goodbye on its display screen and is taken to the corral for recharging, where it wirelessly sends data about the items purchased to a Media Cart server. The server then routes that data to the company's data warehouse, located in Dallas.

Media Cart Holdings is not the first company to develop an RFID-enabled shopping cart to provide shoppers with information inside the store. (See Grocery Retailers Test RFID-enabled Shopping Carts and RFID for Your Shopping Cart for additional examples.) However, one feature that sets its cart apart from the others', the company says, is that it will cost retailers about the same as a typical shopping cart, while consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies will pay a per-click fee to display advertisements for their products. Retailers will pay about $150 for the cart, which will be installed and maintained by Media Cart.