Smart Carts
What can you find in a parking lot that’s made of metal wire and plastic, has a rear swinging door and four wobbly wheels, can carry a week’s groceries plus a small child, and hasn’t had a major design update in over 150 years? You guessed it — a shopping cart.
According to Wikipedia (who else?), the first shopping carts were introduced on June 4, 1937, invented by Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma. The rear swinging door was invented in 1946 by Orla Watson. And the ubiquitous shopping cart has remained basically the same ever since.
My Cart Is Smarter Than Your Cart
Shopping carts were originally invented to make it easier for customers to carry more items and buy more groceries. Can we make it even easier for customers and drive more sales? With the advent of online shopping, smart phones and digital wallets, isn’t it inevitable that the dumb shopping cart is finally getting smarter?
That’s what Caper CEO and Co-founder Lindon Gao thought. Gao realized that you could bring people back into physical stores if you could eliminate the things people hate about shopping, like standing in line or searching the shelves for items. In fact, there are some places where consumers might even prefer physical shopping. Places like a grocery store, where people like to look at the food they are going to eat before they purchase it. So, why not make a shopping cart that holds the items a shopper wants to purchase, but also eliminates the need to stand in line to buy those items?
Checkout Made Easy
Introducing the new “Smart Cart” by Caper.
Scan
Scan the item barcode, and simply add it to the shopping cart. No app download necessary.
Pay
Once you have completed shopping, pay directly on the cart, with credit/debit or mobile payment.
Go
Remove your bagged items from the cart, skip the cashiers, and be on your way!
A helpful feature of Caper is the use of a screen mounted on the front of the cart. The screen notifies the customer of products that have coupons, directs the customer to specific locations inside the store to find products using an in-store map, and confirms that all of the items the shopper wanted to purchase have been added to the cart. A virtual basket is displayed on the screen with each item and how much it costs.
Another nice feature of the Caper smart cart is that it comes with grocery bags. This allows customers to bag their own groceries as they shop, thus saving even more time.
Caper claims that its new smart cart can increase sales by up to 18% by interacting with customers. The integrated smart screen features a store map/item locator, smart recommendations based on cart content, as well as promotions and deals. This gives customers exposure to products they may overlook or are unable to find.
The Caper smart cart is easy for stores to install, because the technology is in the cart itself. It doesn’t require a huge investment in redesigned shelves, cameras and sensors. The only integration needed is with the store’s point of sales (POS) system.
What’s Next?
According to Trend Hunter, the Caper Smart Cart is presently being used in two grocery store chains and is set to be rolled out to an additional 150 stores in 2019.
Caper’s currently deployed model requires each item to be scanned before it’s placed in the cart. Caper’s next generation smart cart, however, will detect items as they enter the cart; customers can just toss items in the cart and then leave the store.
