Driving Impulse Shopping with a Smart Cart

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Text source: Technology Review
By Duncan Graham-Rowe


Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology may not only be useful for streamlining inventory and supply chains: it could also make shoppers swarm. A new study suggests that supermarkets could increase their revenues by using information gleaned from RFID tags to make shoppers behave like an impulse-buying collective.

Impulse buying currently accounts for about 40 percent of all supermarket purchases, says Ronaldo Menezes, an expert in swarm intelligence at the Florida Institute of Technology, in Melbourne, FL. But his research suggests that impulse buying could be significantly increased if information was fed back to shoppers about what others are buying.

Full article at Technology Review