The Technology Changing Grocery Shopping As We Know It

It could be helpful to consumers in terms of shortening the time it takes to find the product they are looking for, but it is also part of a larger trend in which merchants attempt to limit customers' choices and guide them to the brands or products the merchant prefers either because of better margins or partnership deals with the brand.

The biggest question may be to what degree this level of coercive prodding violates cultural norms - and anti-trust laws. JL


Hayley Peterson reports in Business Insider:

The technology, which digitally displays pricing and nutritional information, video ads, and coupons, is installed on store shelves. (It) gives Kroger the ability to instantly change prices and activate promotions across its stores, enabling it to undercut sales at other chains and freeing up employees who change prices by hand. (It) communicates with customers' smartphones to complete their shopping lists. "As you walk down the aisle, it will highlight the next item for you to pick on your list." The shelf will light up underneath the product shoppers are seeking, helpful to customers trying to identify a specific brand among a sea of identical-looking items.

Kroger is rolling out new technology to its stores that could change grocery shopping as we know it.

• The technology digitally displays pricing and nutritional information, as well as video ads and coupons for various products.
• It will eventually communicate with customers' smartphones and highlight products on their shopping lists as they walk down store aisles — helping them to quickly select items in a sea of identical-looking items.
• It will also highlight items that match customers' dietary needs if they have allergies or other dietary restrictions.

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The technology, called Kroger Edge, will be installed on store shelves where paper price tags currently hang. It digitally displays pricing and nutritional information, as well as video ads and coupons for various products.
The technology gives Kroger the ability to instantly change prices and activate promotions across its stores, enabling it to undercut sales at other chains and freeing up employees who would otherwise change prices by hand.
"It's an exciting platform for a lot of future innovation," Kroger Chief Information Officer Chris Hjelm told Business Insider in an interview.
In the future, the technology will communicate with customers' smartphones to help them complete their shopping lists.

"As you walk down the aisle, it will highlight the next item for you to pick on your shopping list," Hjelm said. This means the shelf will light up underneath the product that shoppers are seeking.
Kroger employees recently tested out this function while picking items for customers' online orders.
"They loved it," Hjelm said, noting that it drastically cut down on the amount of time it took to pick and pack the orders.
Kroger expects Edge to be particularly helpful to customers trying to identify a specific brand among a sea of identical-looking items.
"If you are looking for a particular bottle of wine, Edge will show it to you by highlighting it on the shelf," Hjelm said.
The technology can even help customers select items based on their dietary restrictions.
"If you are standing in front of nutrition bars and you are gluten-free, we would highlight for you, in your color of choice, which of the gluten-free bars are good for you," Hjelm said.

Kroger Edge is currently deployed in only a handful of stores. For now, customers must use one of Kroger's handheld devices to communicate with the system.
The company is working on developing an app that will enable customers to take advantage of the system with their smartphones.
Kroger Edge will be available in 200 stores by the end of 2018, but mostly in stores' end caps — the industry's term for displays at the ends of store aisles.
It could also start showing up soon in other retailers' stores. Kroger is marketing and selling the technology, which was developed with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing service, to other retailers globally.

The digital shelving is being tested throughout two pilot stores and has been rolled out to about 100 Kroger stores' end caps, an industry term for the space at the end of store aisles.

Here's how it works.

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As customers move through a Kroger store's aisles, digital price tags will light up with a personalized icon that signifies an item on their shopping list.

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The icon, such as a pumpkin, is selected by the customer and stored in their shopper profile.

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Customers can scan items using their smartphones as they place them in their carts.

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This allows them to bypass checkout lines when they're done shopping.

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They can also scan products using a handheld

device provided by Kroger.

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When a shopper is done scanning an item, an app will show them where to find the next product on their list.

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The app will also show them coupons and ads.

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It can even help customers select items based on their dietary restrictions. "If you are standing in front of nutrition bars and you are gluten-free, we would highlight for you, in your color of choice, which of the gluten-free bars are good for you," Kroger's chief information officer, Chris Hjelm, told Business Insider in an interview last year.

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The technology was developed with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud-computing service. Kroger and Microsoft announced Monday that they were marketing it to other retailers globally.

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The technology should be particularly helpful for Kroger employees picking and packing customers' online orders.

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Hjelm said that during a pilot test, the light-up tags drastically cut down on the amount of time it took employees complete online orders.

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This could give Kroger an advantage over Amazon as demand grows for curbside grocery pickup. Amazon recently started rolling out curbside pickup from Whole Foods stores.

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