Giant experiments with grocery store of the future

As Kiosk Marketplace reports, Giant Food Stores is partnering with Agilysys Inc., St. Clair Interactive Communications Inc., IBM Corp. and Symbol Technologies to build a new 90,000+ square foot grocery store featuring the latest in self-service innovations, including interactive kiosks, personal shopping scanners, and digital signs.

I've yet to see a personal shopping system that I've been impressed with (remember the ZapLink anybody? And what's going on with IBM's Shopping Buddy?), however I'm still hopeful that one of these days somebody will come up with a solution that is both easy-to-use and provides a real value to the consumer. Here's what they have to say about this iteration of the product:

A customer entering the store scans their loyalty card, then picks up one of the handheld units and begins shopping, scanning items as they place them directly into bags in the cart.

"'The idea is that at the point in time that you pick up a product, you scan it with that personal shopper and bag it in the cart,' [Agilysys Director of Sales Aaron] Hagler said. 'The next time you’re supposed to touch that item is literally when you get home.'

Efficiencies in self-checkout might be enough to convince the average shopper, but only time will tell.

Read the full article here.