Perspectives for Food in 2030 by Dr. Gerd Wolfram – Managing Director MGI METRO Group Information Technology
A vision for the future of retailing by Metro Group.
http://ec.europa.eu/research/conferences/2007/food2030/docs/food-2030-gerd-wolfram_en.pdf [pdf]
Interactive terminals and tasting stations turn daily shopping into an experience to savor. Terminals offer additional information like detailed nutritional values, seasonal recipes, and videos. Customers can also check the precise origin of products, breeding methods, and packaging. For quick navigation the Information Terminal is connected to the Everywhere Display –a projector which shows the way to any desired product via an image display on the floor.
Intava’s latest-generation Smart Merchandising System empowers shoppers to compare dozens of products and receive personalized recommendations–all on a simple, fun touch-screen surface. By providing detailed product information during the point of decision, Intava’s Smart Merchandising System helps develop informed, engaged and active shoppers from the moment they use the system.
The system provides five key shopping elements:
Enjoy a brief demo of interactive technology for retail settings developed by Intava Corporation. This system makes comparative shopping easy and entertaining.
Intelligentz Corporation and Ubisense have partnered to deliver a revolutionary solution for retail stores. The CartMotion product combines Ubisense’s precise real-time location system (RTLS) with Intelligentz’s analytical engine. The valuable data provided on consumer behavior, conversion rate and asset management enables retailers to improve sales conversion, productivity and customer service.
“The CartMotion application required a RTLS provider that could deliver a precise location system that supported our analytical engine” said Jerry Flores, Vice President of Business Development for Intelligentz Corporation. “With RTLS, CartMotion is able to capture accurate data movement within six inches of a cart’s exact location.”
For the first time in the retail industry, CartMotion provides valuable data to both retailers and manufacturers. The system delivers detailed data on consumers’ shopping behaviors throughout the retail environment including: consumer shopping patterns, wait times, traffic counts by category, time spent in each category, retail conversion rates and asset management. The Ubisense sensors are discreetly positioned around the store perimeter and once installed may be employed to also track other items as the need arises.
Richard Green, CEO Ubisense, added: “We are very pleased to be working with Intelligentz who are truly developing the next generation of retail applications involving precise location.”
Shopping by SENSO. Smart Fitting Rooms and Smart Shelves as well as service via mobile devices and internet are revolutionizing our future buying habits. Smart Fitting Rooms are available today in Senso’s most advanced retail stores. For further intformation, visit sensosolutions.com
IDTechEx forecasts that, while the yearly number of mobile phones sold rises from one to two billion in the next few years, the number of RFID enabled phones sold will rise from 134 million in 2008 to 860 million in 2018, mostly all of this is happening in East Asia. East Asians will continue to show the way, not because of differences in consumer wants but because their governments and industry make sure the inter-industry haggling stops and projects that benefit the nation go ahead.
See www.IDTechEx.com/nfc for full details.
Media Cart
Microsoft and Media Cart Holdings Inc will help turn customers at ShopRite grocery stores into smart shoppers. The technology being touted is RFID enabled ‘MediaCarts’ which are reportedly being rolled out soon.
Inbuilt RFID technology identifies the location of the cart in the store, and coupled with relevant shopping history delivers pertinent communications such as useful advertisements and product offers based on the items specific to the location of the shopper. For instance, if a shopper is in the wine section , a wine coupon could appear on the MediaCart display.
Media Cart Holdings, Inc., delivers computerized retail and grocery shopping cart systems to both assist shoppers and deliver point-of-purchase video communications for retailers and consumer product goods manufacturers. For retailers, MediaCart integrates with their point-of-sale systems to offer a competitive advantage for increasing customer loyalty and improving sales while capturing a new revenue stream from advertisements and promotions to individual shoppers. The Company was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Plano, Texas. Further information on MediaCart and its revolutionary shopping systems can be found at http://www.mediacart.com.
Facial Recognition
The Japanese want to ensure that their young citizens cannot purchase cigarettes from cigarette vending machines have come up with an RFID based vending machine with facial recognition software.
More than 570,000 cigarette vending machines were fitted with RFID readers so that their age verification cards could be checked before cigarettes were dispensed to them. People without age verification cards could make purchases using the face recognition system which recognized the facial features of the person and in case it believed that the person is over the legal age of twenty then only the cigarettes were dispensed to them but one of the reporters managed to fool the system using fake pictures of a fifty year old man and female celebrity in her thirties and get cigarettes for himself.
The face-recognition machines rely on cameras that scan the purchaser’s face for wrinkles, sagging skin and other signs of age. Facial characteristics are compared with a database of more than 100,000 people, and if the purchaser is thought to be well over 20 years old (the legal age), the sale is approved. If the purchaser looks too young, they are asked to prove their age by inserting a driver’s license.
The company responsible for these vending machines is now working on a more advanced system that will make sure each face belongs to a real human, but they are unable to say when these new machines will be put into place.