There is new technology everywhere, and you may be finding more and more retail and commercial floors in the grocery aisles that bring technology to you. For example, price scanners, and more have hit the shelf over the years, and now it’s possible to take a picture or “hover” the camera of your phone over it and get price checks in more. All of this within a 10-year span. In this article, we’re going to tell you about some eye-catching grocery store tech innovations to increase sales above and beyond an attractive physical display from Lemontree Manufacturing.
- Digital Shelving
By using digital “price tags”, it’s much easier to set up shop and then rearrange as needed. Store owners can literally scan the item, and enter the code or change things like price labels out for their shelves, as well as provide codes on their shelves to offer mobile price checking even more than ever. - Augmented Reality
This is something that even Wal-Mart is investing in. Used originally by “secret shoppers”, this method of mobile and handheld shopping is an innovative way to scan the barcode of items and either add it to your list, and even ring up purchases on the fly, such as Wal-Mart’s “Scan N Go” app that you can use, which allows you to scan the items, then use your mobile device to check out. - Robot Inventory
There are numerous retailers who are starting to use robots in order to get the orders right. When people were in charge, stores were often left with too much overstock and not enough stock of higher demand products. With careful algorithms (like sales based on certain days and times of the year), robots have not been able to be programmed to take over ordering and scanning shelves so that way it cuts a lot of time and labor out of ordering. This saves the company tons of money in the long run because they don’t have to hire someone. - Amazon Go
The Amazon Go is a way to have a checkout-free store that operates similar to the scan and go, but with a twist. Customers can order from retailers like Kroger, there are products that are available which feature buying from Amazon, then literally walking in, grabbing the products, then go out the door. The products that the customer takes are then “purchased” and processed accordingly. This technology is extremely limited to places in Chicago, IL, Seattle, WA, and San Francisco, CA so it isn’t quite mainstream just yet. - Voice Activated-Shopping Experience
By 2022, the majority of homes will house automated smart systems like Siri, Google, and Amazon’s voice-activated smart speakers. Stores are expected to start taking the leap into the voice-activated system and users will be able to do the same thing that they would do with a smartphone or computer, such as order specific ingredients, but more importantly, they’ll be able to do this hands-free on the fly. This will be the equivalent of calling the store, ordering a product, then “sending someone” (in this case, the user) to the store to pick it up. There are even options that are anticipated to be available like speedy checkout via voice by submitting stored card information on store’s servers (many stores, like Walmart.com, Amazon, Google, Kroger’s, and many more already have options to store payment information for fast future checkout).
What About My Security?
Security is the biggest issue when it comes to creating these, but most importantly, it’s security of privacy. All of the big-name companies in the world do store your information, and some, such as Google and even Facebook have been known to track more than we think about literally everything we do.
But what makes it important is how secure they are (Google is extremely secure). While it’s important to know that your data will be possibly stored and saved for you, the goal will be to make it impossible for anyone else to get your information since the most common method of this is basic user error (passwords that aren’t discreet and custom, sharing information to “scammers and spammers”, clicking “phishing” links, and more).
Conclusion
There are more and more technological advances being made almost every day when it comes to places partnering with digital services. Not only this, but app developers and even vendors are starting to utilize many inventory management practices which are developing more use of high-tech gadgets, let alone what they actually use to stock their shelves. The typical American worried about the lack of jobs, program errors, and bugs, but in all actuality, it’s been proven that some products can be better maintained when it’s done digitally, and it takes the need to hire so many workers to do a job this way.
