SCDigest Editorial Staff

The News: Meijer, a regional mass merchandiser and grocery chain, says it is testing the use of RFID tags on shopping carts to better understand the amount of time shoppers spend in the store and staff certain areas, such as check-out lines.

The Impact: Meijer likely is ultimately most interested in gaining insight into how shoppers actually navigate the retailer’s huge stores (SCDigest opinion only). Given the huge footprint of Meijer stores, that makes sense, though for now such tracking will be limited due to privacy concerns. This experiment highlights areas where RFID can provide some unique value, but consumer concerns will provide powerful constraints to the possibilities.

The Story: Meijer, the Grand Rapids, MI mass merchandiser and grocer, said it will pursue an RFID pilot in a few of its Detroit area stores in which RFID tags will be placed on shopping carts, enabling it to better understand where shopper volumes and service needs are.

Meijer will test the shopping cart technology to learn how long it takes, on average, for customers to complete a shopping trip and to know if carts are in one of four locations: in the corral pick-up location, in the shopping area, near checkout or in the parking lot.

A company spokesperson said monitoring times and locations could allow managers to deploy additional cashiers before lines back up. The spokesperson said Meijer won't use the technology to track cart movement in the store or to determine whether an aisle or department is unusually busy.

It seems to SCDigest, however, that this is where the real value is. Certainly, store managers should be able to see when check-out lines back up, or if there is a big surge in the deli.

We can’t help but think Meijer is at least considering the possibility for additional intelligence as a potential benefit of the technology, available for the price of a few more readers. Understanding how and when consumers move through a large store format – and how long they stop at an end of aisle display, for example – would be of huge value for retail merchandisers and consumer goods marketers.

Meijer said it will ultimately also look at using RFID to automate self-check out and speed the time customers wait in lines. This would of course require item-level RFID tagging, but tagged carts could help, with customers perhaps “checking out” a cart when entering the store and having that associated with loyalty and credit card info.

So called “smart carts,” with on board terminals and wireless links, might also suggest specials or complementary purchases to shoppers, among other capabilities, and may not involve RFID at all.

Do you think tracking shopping cart activity in store would be valuable to retailers? Will consumer privacy issues block these types of initiatives in the end? Let us know your thoughts.