Bleeping cart

Reading the paper this morning, I learn that Microsoft and MediaCart of Plano, Texas have jointly developed an electronic console for a shopping cart. It’s supposed to offer customers their shopping list as well as a scanner to be able checkout without having to wait in line (or talk to anyone). Sounds pretty cool, until you go further: An embedded RFID tag will allow ShopRite to track their customers shopping patterns (and you were hoping nobody was watching when you doubled back for the forgotten tomato sauce). They state that this will enable them to “make the shopping experience better for the consumer.”

I’m already wary of having to not only create an electronic shopping list (I have tried this, but it’s hard to do when you’ve got your head in the freezer to see what that white lump is), but they completely lose me with the “targeted marketing.” They’re going to display a coupon for Oreos when I enter the cookie aisle, and they’re trying to figure out why I may or may not buy the product. I can think of a thousand reasons why I may not take them up on the offer, and the RFID tag isn’t going to tell them. Perhaps I buy them in bulk at the warehouse store. Perhaps I’m on a tight budget so I buy Hydrox instead. Maybe I’m allergic to wheat, and so opt for Newman’s wheat-free knockoff. Or maybe I still have a mound of Christmas cookies at home and don’t need to add any cookies to the pile. It could be that my mother-in-law live with me and bakes cookies every Tuesday afternoon, so I don’t need store-bought cookies. Maybe I just don’t like Oreos.

As an aside, I can’t help but wonder how this is supposed to enhance the experience of the harried mother. Imagine putting a control panel on the handle where a baby or toddler can push buttons at will: it’s like a remote you can’t take away from the kid, with the screen behind them, so they are constantly turning around and trying to squirm out of their seat. Moms already have to drive our cart down the center of the aisle to avoid the grab and toss: Imagine letting the kidlet scan your cottage cheese three times—and pay for it. For our family, who actively tries to avoid screen time, it’s a nightmarish scenario, and only serves to drive me away from stores who have it. The distracted mom’s seemingly random pattern tracked by the RFID (including three passes back to the dairy case and one to the bathroom) might be good for a few laughs, and might even skew the results past usefulness.

Now, instead of developing more and more complicated systems to track my behavior and extrapolate my intentions, I’m thinking of a decidedly low-tech solution (beginning with that luddite favorite, the back-of-the-envelope shopping list). Let the grocer take the time to know me, inefficiently chatting at the checkout counter. He’ll begin to get a full picture of me as a human being, not the tendencies of a demographic. Anyone who has spent any time selling their wares on a personal scale and chatting with their custom will develop an instinct that can run circles around their MediaCart console. Imagine a world where people connect with each other, instead of staring at their computer screens to figure each other out.