The future of…

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The future of superstores

August 2000

Positioning based services

Today, the Global Positioning System is accurate to within 100m, or 10m with error correction. The system is useful for a wide range of navigation related services, and a similar European system will be in operation by 2008. Both of these are satellite based. But positioning systems in the future will be rather more ubiquitous than even a satellite system can manage. Satellite signals cannot easily be received within most buildings or in urban canyons, where tall buildings obscure the view of satellites. There is an obvious need for in-building positioning systems and urban positioning.

In a superstore with in-building positioning, shoppers can be provided with in-store navigation services. Smart trolleys or hand-held devices could notify them of special offers nearby, or help them find items on their shopping list. This service can link together the customer loyalty card, which allows the store to predict what the customer is likely to need. Of course, the store knows where the items are so can guide the customer to them.

Store lighting could be used to highlight the items individual customers are likely to be interested in as they walk past, dimming those that they have never shown any interest in. A dynamic travelling salesman algorithm could optimise the customer's journey through the store.

Crowd management

Positioning could even be used as part of an automated congestion management system, diluting crowds around the store by taking them on different routes. Purchases that are smart-card based could be priced at the time the customer takes the item off the shelf. Dynamic pricing would allow incentives for people to migrate to other parts of the store at a given time, as part of the congestion management system.

Smart cards

These facilities could obviously be based around smart cards, replacing the dumb loyalty cards of today. The smart card might have a simple display, detailing the shopping list and with an arrow indicating which way to go for the next item.

A simple barcode scanner could be built into the card, rather like those used for rapid VCR programming. Customers could use these to automate their shopping lists, scanning in items around the kitchen that they need to replace, or making lists of store based items to enhance the speed of remote internet shopping. With a scanner, a store could also issue full catalogues of their items with barcodes alongside, or simple numbers that could be typed into the smart-card.

As the customer walks into the store, they could hand over the smart card with the shopping list, and relax in the restaurant while a picker collects the groceries. This experience might compete favourably with shopping from home, since it outsources the dull routine purchases but allows the customer to be personally involved in fussing over other choices.

Smart cards are only one platform on which such services can be based. In the next few years, we will see an explosion in the range of mobile gadgetry available, with many combinations of mobile phone, computer, displays, transceivers and sensors. Some of these may be dedicated to shopping, with many services on board and others available via mobile internet access.

Calling line Identity

Using the telephone and a built in tone generator, the shopping list alternatively be uploaded automatically over the phone line by the smart card, so that the goods can be ordered and delivered with the minimum of human intervention. The phone network automatically provides calling line identity, and this enables the store to identify the customer, with their address and credit card details etc. The smart card would also issue a safeguard code. Bluetooth would accelerate this process dramatically, as would a smart card reader on a PC connected to the net.

Cyberzones

Of course, even the largest superstore has a finite capacity. Stores can sell many more items than they have room to display or even stock. In a cyber-zone, people could electronically purchase items. In simple form, this can be implemented in a simple terminal. However, in the future, it could become the most exciting part of the shopping trip. Imagine using a virtual reality zone, where you can browse through the goods on offer in a completely virtual environment, perhaps based on an adventure. You could fight off tigers and crocodiles as you wander round a synthetic jungle, plucking the fruit you need off the trees as you run past. But what does a television tree look like? Such zones are limited only by imagination, and could greatly enhance the shopping experience, whether store or internet based (see the Future of shopping).

Active Lenses and Head-up Displays

In the next few years, many of us will wear spectacles with head up displays. These already exist today, but are yet to become mass market. A projector in the arm projects an image onto a reflector in the lens, or on an arm in front projects an image directly into the eye. The user sees a large display hanging in space a little way in front. These displays could be used for all kinds of applications. Mixing position-based information with what the user sees in the real world, items can be enhanced, with product information overlaid on the item, or people could see what the product looks like or an advert instead of just conventional packaging. This data could be broadcast by the store transmission systems, or eventually even by chips in the packaging or shelf itself. Recommendations on new purchases could be made to customers as they wander round, based on the sorts of things they have bought repeatedly in the past. For some products, there may be associated external institutions or products, such as clubs or relevant local activities. Customers could be informed about these too.

Advert T-shirts

Within a few years, polymer displays will be commonplace and some people may even wear 'teletubby' T-shirts, with display panels built into the clothing instead of a static logo or design. These panels could display moving graphics and videos. They could even be used to display adverts to other shoppers for a discount to the wearer. Hopefully though, although this may be technologically feasible, we will never actually see it used in practice - hopefully.

Chips in everything

Very cheap chips will be built into many things around us in the future. Simple chips in product packaging have already been propoised to enable automatic billing, removing the need for queues at checkouts, or evntually even for the checkout at all. Customers may just load up the trolley and leave, the chips signal to the store computer along with the customer's smart card. Customers would have their accounts automatically debited. Other chips would record information on use-by dates and product type so that home electronics can determine what is available for lunch and what needs replaced on the next shopping trip.

Smart cash

Superstores have been very innovative over the years, with special offers, vouchers and coupons, loyalty schemes, and so on. With electronic cash and especially with smart cards, many more opportunities lie in new types of cash. (See 'the future of money'). Good examples relevant to superstores are time dependent vouchers, that are worth more at off-peak times; vouchers which gradually lose value instead of suddenly at a cut-off date; algorithmic and conditional vouchers, which depend on purchases of combinations of items, even over a long period of time.