On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, James Governor wrote:
>
> FWIW: Safeway in the UK (a different org from the US Safeway) ran a
> trial with customers that were already members of its existing loyalty
> scheme.
>
> These customers would use Palm Pilot and scan the items they selected as
> they shopped. When they were done they could jump the queue, and the
> final payment was based on what was in the palm, rather than what was in
> the basket itself.
This self-scanning scheme (Shop & Go) has been running for a long time,
as noted at the bottom of the press release. What it's announcing is
an experimental extension of that to ordering by bar-code.
<snip>
> Easi-Order units are PalmPilots specially designed for Safeway.
I suspect that they were actually re-branded Symbol devices.
> They are fitted with bar code readers which, in the future, will allow
> customers to self-scan the products themselves at home or in-store,
> including those sold by competitors. They also double up as
> fully-functional personal organisers.
>
> "Most of our customers don't have access to the internet so we wanted to
> develop a remote ordering service that was simple and easy for everyone
> to use."
<snip>
But most of their customers probably also didn't want PDAs or shopping
gadgets to carry around.
Received on Fri Feb 15 21:15:55 2002