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The Smart trolley is a virtual shopping assistant who supports customers for in-store navigation, displaying more product information, accommodating with personal wheelie trollies.
About
By 2050, the world's population aged over 60 is expected to total 2bn, up from 900m in 2015, according to the World Health Organization. Given this demographic shift, older people represent an increasingly valuable target market for retailers, none more so than supermarkets, which have expanded significantly in recent years as smaller local shops, traditionally favoured by older consumers, have closed down. The Silver Shopper project led by Dr Yuanyuan Yin has sought to understand the challenges that older people face in the supermarket environment in the UK, where 34% of the population in 2050 will be over 60. The Silver Shopper project has identified several challenges for older people including understanding where products are located; accessing products on high or low shelves; poor signage and labelling; heavy baskets and deep trollies; and issues with online shopping. Based on study results, one of the key research outputs is a newly designed and prototyped Smart Trolley. This is a smaller sized trolley designed based on the needs of older customers as one end user group but targets an inclusive design for all customers. The Smart Trolley has two main parts: the trolley frame and a smart tablet device. The trolley frame is a smaller sized trolley which allows customers to put various types of personal shopping bags and wheelie trolley into the Smart Trolley frame. The base of the Smart Trolley is lower than most trollies in the market which allows customers to easily put or remove shopping bags or personal shopping trolleys into or from the Smart Trolley. The smart tablet device provides a platform for a shopping assistant App application to support customers during their in-store shopping journey. Based on technologies of Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, big data and Internet of Things (IoT), the App can support customers to have a pleasant shopping experience by building their shopping list easily, in-store navigation, searching products, promotion comparison, easy checkout and payment. For example, a customer can develop their shopping list by scanning a product at home, typing in the item via the App on a computer, a smartphone or a tablet device, or modify their previous frequent shopping item list on the App. Then, once the customer arrived at the store and grab a Smart Trolley, the App will generate an in-store route based on items s/he wants to buy and the latest store layout plan. The in-store navigation function will direct the customer to pick up and scan items one by one. It will also warn the customer if they pick up a product that they should not buy due to contraindications with their medication or other health-related issues, and then provide information of the similar product that suitable for the customer. Once the customer finished the shopping, as all items have been scanned during shopping, the customer can check out and make payment via the shopping App. The shopping assistant App will provide rich customer shopping behaviour data for retailers to explore how customers move around a store, what and when customers buy certain types of products, how often they buy and how much they spend. This will help them to develop a more accurate business plan, support stock management, improve store layout design and customer service. The Smart Trolley was co-designed with ageing customers, retailers, designers and design researchers. It has been tested with 7 ageing customers at a conceptual prototype stage. The final design has been tested by 4 ageing customers and discussed with 3 retail staff in a real store environment. The trolley design has been welcomed by both the customers and retail staff. One of the ageing customers said: ‘I am very impressed… particular the smart tablet on it, it is very straight forward to use… so I am very impressed.’ Another one commented ‘I want to use this trolley if it is available in a supermarket’.
Key Benefits
The Smart Trolley helps to overcome several shopping challenges that customers face, especially for ageing customers, such as: • The current deep trolley is too big and difficult to reach the base • The current trolley designs do not fully support customers to put their personal shopping wheelie trolley, shopping box or different sized shopping bags into the trolley • Difficulties in finding items in a store, especially when store just updated layout plan or moved product around • The current Scan & Go and self-checkout design do not satisfy ageing customers’ needs • Difficulties to read product information from the package and compare price for the best value The shopping assistant App will provide benefits to customers, such as • Assistance in developing their shopping list based on their shopping needs. • In-store navigation and product location • Call for assistance from the customer service staff • Easy checkout without queuing • Ageing friendly technology co-designed with end-users to support their shopping needs Benefits to retailers, such as • Better understanding of customers’ current and future shopping habits and needs, • Data to support improvements to business plan • Understand customer’s in-store journey (the way people moving in the store), • Improve store efficiency and reduce demands for the shop floor labour force • Speed up customers’ shopping process to reduce customers’ shopping time • Potential to increase sales per square meter
Applications
The Smart Trolley can be applied in small, medium and large supermarket stores. It also can be adopted for other retailers, such as fashion stores or shopping centers.