Metro s Future Store: A Look at Where It All Comes Together

Metro's Future Store: A Look at Where It All Comes Together

The Metro Group is the world's fourth-largest retail and trading group in the world, with more than 2,300 store locations in 28 countries (mainly in Europe) and approximately 240,000 employees. Like Wal-Mart, Metro has the ability to profoundly influence the entire retail landscape.

Metro's Future Store initiative (www.future-store.org) is a cooperative project supported by many computing vendors, including IBM, Intel, and SAP. As part of the project, technologies and systems are invented, tested, debugged, and then showcased to the world of retailing.

Part of the vision of Future Store is to combine total product and inventory tracking with as much data as the individual consumer is willing to share with Metro, in the belief that the more Metro's system knows about you the shopper, the betterfor both the shopper and for Metro.

We will walk through a Future Store supermarket from entrance to exit to understand what this means. Although some of this is hypothetical, all the technology elements are real and much of it is already in use in some Metro experimental stores in Europe.

As you enter the store, you grab a shopping carriage as you normally would. However, this is no ordinary shopping cart. In fact, the magic cart is a focal point for a number of technology vectors, including WiFi, GPS, and RFIDall of which are built in.

After you identify yourself using a personal identification card, you can build your shopping list and load it into a PDA-like device attached to the handle. The PDA includes a flat-panel displayfar larger than the normal PDA screen but not overly obtrusivethat is attached near the handle so that you can interact with it as needed.

Because the cart is WiFi connected to both the store's internal computing system and the Internet, you can build your shopping list using data saved from your last shopping trips. For example, the system tracks what you commonly buy for weekly grocery items and will include them on the list automatically. You can then make additions and deletions. To maintain your loyalty, the shopping cart will offer you special discounts on items that it knows you have purchased in the past, or as rewards for being a frequent shopper.

If your refrigerator is RFID enabled, using the cart's WiFi connection to the Internet, you can also check in with your refrigerator to see what you need. If other parts of your living space are RFID enabled, you can check them, too. In addition, Metro plans to make a service available that enables you to send and store your own personal "product desire" messages to your account at the store. Perhaps earlier in the week, your daughter noticed that she was about to run out of toothpaste. Using her PDA, she just queues a message to buy more the next time you shop. When you are at the store, these can be aggregated with other shopping list sources. It is conceivable that the store's internal system could actually help you plan out menus as well, perhaps showing a week's calendar and assignments of various key items to the days (steak on Tuesday with broccoli, fresh fish tonight with asparagus, etc.).

Now armed with your shopping list, the magic cart operates somewhat like a mini-GPS system. The display gives you a top-down map of the store aisles while it pinpoints your current location. If you want, it will map out a route for you and highlight areas you need to specifically visit. As you pass the cart by certain shelves, targeted advertisements for nearby products such as toilet tissueon sale this week onlylight up the PDA screen. Specials on connected productsbacon with eggs, ham with cheese, corned beef with cabbageare offered especially to you, the valued customer.

The store shelves are "smart shelves," meaning that they know exactly what products are on them and in what quantity. Before an item runs out on the shelf, the system has alerted the storage room and called for replenishing. The storage room is tightly tied system-wise to the supply chain and in-store inventory systems. As pallets are unloaded from a shipping truck, the contents of the entire pallet are instantly known (and accurately, without human inspection) and registered in the inventory system. When a shelf calls for a new carton of chicken soup, for example, as the carton is passed through the doors of the back room and onto the store floor, the inventory system is updated and marked as "in store." Once placed on the shelf, the smart shelf updates the inventory as "on shelf." The product can be completely tracked by RFID technologyfrom manufacturer, to store shelf, into a shopping cart, and finally to home.

By virtue of RFID-tagged products, the shopping cart knows exactly what is in it and can show you your local inventory neatly on the screen at all timesperhaps sorted by product type, or alphabetically if you want. As the shopping cart passes through a special gate at checkout, the RFIDtagged items are instantly known to the in-store system. There is no need for you to line up and pile these items on to a checkout conveyor belt, only to have them individually scanned and rehandled back into your shopping cart. For non-RFID-tagged items, camera-enabled weight scales allow for automatic recognition of your produce selection. Place the bananas on the scale and the system recognizes them, weighs them, and associates the cost to your cart. Advances in video capture and image analysis make this possible.

In the future, it might not even be necessary to pay interactively given that you have identified yourself to the store. (Perhaps your account will simply be debited.) As you exit the store, you might choose to have some product's RFID tags deactivated (if you are concerned about privacy implications, for instance) . In the Metro view, there will be a station where you can pass individual products under a scanner and have their RFID tag zero'd out.

Stop & Shop

Stop & Shop is a large, multibillion-dollar New England area grocery store chain (and more) with more than 345 stores and 57,000 employees. They have been discretely testing a new shopping cart system called the Shopping Buddy in a few stores south of Boston. In 2003, Stop & Shop started introducing the Shopping Buddy, a wireless cart-attached computer with an attractive color display. Shopping Buddy is based on a smattering of WiFi, infrared, ceiling sensors, and Bluetooth technology to assist in tracking and communicating with the carts.

When shoppers swipe their Stop & Shop discount cards through the display, Shopping Buddy calls up the shopper's most recent purchases and calls out the locations of these products. An in-store positioning system also allows Stop & Shop to display discounts on items that are in close proximity to Shopping Buddy. Shopping Buddy is also used for targeted advertising campaigns. For added convenience, shoppers can place deli orders while careening through the isles, and then pick up their deli merchandise as they pass by. The system even has a bar code scanning wand that enables customers to record their own selections for more easy review as they shop (because RFID-tagged products are not here yet).

Shopping Buddy "learns" as time goes on. It gets to know individual shopping preferences, and therefore can better offer discounts and accompanying purchases. One of Stop & Shop's ultimate goals is customer loyalty. Might such a system increase loyalty and cause shoppers to return to the stores that know them best? Many retailers are thinking this is one more tool to retain customers, especially those who relish convenience and expediency (and personalization).

Many parts of this Metro Future Store are real today and in use in the actual Metro stores in Europe (with similar capabilities within Stop & Shops in the United States). Regarding RFID, there are experimental stores with smart shelves that can track those products that are currently shipping with RFID tags. Once the list of retail products sporting RFID tags becomes pervasive, more shelves and more stores will exploit the technology. It will perhaps be a while before our carts can "talk" to our homes and learn what is out of stock, but the WiFi carts and personal shopping assistance technology is here today. RFID is at the heart of this concept of future stores, but so is WiFi and disjointed data streams and a general notion of "connect everything" to achieve higher values.