Annotated Summary

Bedi HS, Goyal N, Kumar S, Gupta A (2017). Smart Trolley using Smart Phone and Arduino. J Electr Electron Syst, 6: 223. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.4172/2332-0796.1000223

This article introduces the integration of a trolley with a smart phone and Arduino to increase the shopping efficiency for customers who patrons the supermarket. The article also discusses the benefits it brings to the different stakeholders of the smart trolley. The system utilises the user’s smartphone to scan for items, where the name and cost of the item will be reflected on a liquid-crystal display (LCD). A radio-frequency identification system is implemented to detect for membership. By tagging an RFID tag on the membership card and placing a RFID scanner on the trolley, members will be detected when they are nearby. After shopping, the customer can transfer the bill to the checkout computer. However, the smart features are exclusive for members only. Patrons without the membership card are limited to a normal trolley without the smart features. The article also mentions the platform they make use of to run the software of the system and explain the procedure of the program. Furthermore, creating a barcode to scan is more economical and efficient as compared to RFID tags.

This article provides useful insights for our research project on improving shopping efficiency with a smart trolley. Like our research project, this article has the same purpose of enhancing patrons shopping experience. By integrating a trolley with an RFID system, they are able to improve the shopping efficiency of shoppers. While the article mentions the use of barcode scanning as their main approach to promote efficient shopping, it still provides us with useful information such as the smart checkout and exclusive membership system that we can apply to One-Stop.

Technical Report Draft 1

Background

Grocery shopping is an important aspect of peoples' lives all around the world. Supermarkets are packed with patrons every day, looking to purchase their household goods. One of the supermarket chains in Singapore, NTUC FairPrice, states on their website that it serves 600,000 customers per day (NTUC FairPrice, n.d.). This is the number of patrons visiting this supermarket chain alone, not to mention there are several other supermarket chains such as Cold Storage, Giant and Sheng Siong. Thus, it is not surprising that the checkout queues in supermarkets are long.

Looking at an extreme case, for example, the recent Coronavirus outbreak has caused Singaporeans to overreact and thus cause an influx of customers to do their shopping (Tan, 2020). The surge of patrons and the fact that they are purchasing goods in bulk effectively creates a standstill in queues, extending customer wait times immensely.

When customers shop for groceries in bulk, they tend to opt for trolleys provided by the supermarket instead of handheld baskets, to hold more merchandise prior to check out. These trolleys are found in all supermarkets with premises large enough to accommodate their use. Trolleys are made out of a combination of metal and plastic parts. A shopping trolley is essentially a large basket on four wheels.

There are aspects of the primitive shopping trolley that is open for improvement, especially due to the advancements in technology in the past few decades. Integration of innovations such as a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system and implementation of a membership system would make the grocery shopping experience more efficient, including a reduction in queue times.

Problem Statement

Given the current technological advancement that is available, the current supermarket trolley lacks these technologies and has been the same for the past decade. The lack of technology in the trolleys prevents efficient shopping by the users which usually ends up with long queues at the counter. An RFID system with a smart trolley should be implemented to address this issue.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this analysis is to suggest a new trolley innovation by installing an RFID device at the trolley's rim with an attachable tablet that will be mounted onto the trolley. This improves efficiency for both the customers and the staff members of the store. Thus, reducing the time spent queueing for checkout.

Proposed Idea

The existing trolley design consists of a four-wheeled basket. Through encouraging loyalty to retail customers, they can enjoy the benefits of using the recently innovated trolley for a better shopping experience. The new smart trolley integrates an RFID scanner with a tablet to track the expenditures of the customers. Customers are able to perform self-checkout without needing to go through the long waiting time at the manual checkout counter. This also allows customers to have a seamless grocery shopping experience while reducing the number of customers in line at the checkout.

RFID Scanner and Detachable Tablet

One key enhancement to the current supermarket trolley will be the addition of an RFID scanner to the trolley. RFID is one of the technologies companies around the world are trying to introduce to the market.

According to Kaur, Sandhu, Mohan and Sandhu (2011), there are many applications for RFID such as tracking of assets, easing the payment system and improving the security system. The addition of the RFID provides a smart system for all the items in the store. For every item the shopper takes and puts in the trolley, the RFID scanner will track the item and reflect the cost of the item on the mounted tablet. The tablet will keep track of the total expenditures of the customer and display the total bill of all the items for the customer. Customers can utilise the tablet to check the availability and location of the item they need. With the RFID scanning and search function, customers are able to shop more efficiently, spending less time in the supermarket.

The tablet provides the customer with the freedom to perform a self-checkout function. Baker (2017) states that customers save up to 15 minutes of their time when they use the self-checkout kiosk. However, the current self-checkout kiosk available at the supermarkets only allows small amounts of purchases. Customers with more than a basket size of groceries will still need to go through the counter for checkout. With the RFID function tracking all the items and the tablet to display the cost, customers will be able to perform the self-checkout function with the trolley. Similar to the current self-checkout kiosk, customers will proceed to the self-checkout kiosk for trolleys, reducing the queues at the manual counter.

According to Bedi (n.d.), the total bill of the customer displayed on the tablet can be transferred to the computer screen with a press of a button. With the ability to perform the self-checkout function with a trolley, customers will not have to go through the process of queueing at the manual counter with the other trolleys. Instead, they are able to shop efficiently with the tablet and the RFID scanner and perform the self-checkout function by themselves with minimal assistance. This will greatly reduce the amount of time spent in the supermarket, thus reducing the number of people queueing in line for checkout.

Membership System

Another key addition that can be improved is to introduce a membership system. The main advantage of the membership system will be the ability to loan the smart tablet from a counter, which is only available for members. Members can then be attached to the trolley, allowing the features of the smart trolley to be utilized.

Introducing a membership system will result in better customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. According to Chong (2019), membership systems are regarded as one of the most familiar and competent methods to allow a company to achieve high rates of customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is described by how a customer purchases products and services over the years from the same company. With the benefits of the smart trolley and the advantages a member gets, it encourages the customers to apply for membership, which will help them shop more efficiently. Having more membership and customer loyalty increases the revenue of the company in the long run.

Benefits

The amount of time shoppers spend in the supermarket, shopping and queueing for checkout will be greatly reduced with the integration of technologies with the current supermarket trolley.

Enhancing User Experience

Integrating technology with the current supermarket trolley allows users to shop more efficiently with minimal help from the supermarket staff. This gives the supermarket the freedom to allocate more manpower to attend stations which require more staff. With the right allocation of manpower, the long queues at the counter can be reduced due to the efficiency the smart trolley provides.

Customer Loyalty

Having a good membership will attract customers to purchase from the same companies due to reputable trust and benefits. Most customers will go back to the same supermarket to shop for the necessity if it is convenient and worthwhile. With the benefits of the membership system, customers will be enticed to utilise the functionality of the trolley when they shop at their preferred supermarket, improving their shopping experience.

Product Tracking

The integration of RFID within the supermarket will allow a better product tracking experience for the staff working in the supermarket. They can use the RFID technology to track the amount of product that is in stock with minimal effort as stocktaking will be done by the system. At the same time, when products on the shelves require replenishing, the management can be notified.

Evaluation

The two proposed designs have their own set of limitations, especially when it comes to security issues.

The integration of an RFID system with a touchscreen tablet increases the value of each individual shopping trolley. It would greatly impact the budget of supermarket chains if these trolleys were to get lost or stolen. In 2015, the Sheng Siong supermarket chain had lost $120,000 worth of shopping trolleys alone and annually spent $150,000 on shopping trolley maintenance and reacquisition of abandoned trolleys according to the article of Heng (2016). Losing a smart trolley would incur huge expenditure to the company liabilities.

However, the integration of the RFID system would include the ability to detect and trigger an alarm if trolleys are being pushed out of the premises with the help of sensors at the supermarket entrances and exits. Also, the tablet does come with a built-in GPS tracker, as do most smart devices nowadays. These technologies would aid in the prevention of theft. Furthermore, with the implementation of the membership system, tablets withdrawn are registered to information of members, which would make it easier to track if they were to get lost or stolen.

As an added bonus of having a tablet integrated into the trolley, supermarkets are able to advertise seasonal sales on particular products or goods, to entice users to spend more in the store. This, on top of a much more efficient shopping experience thanks to the RFID system and hassle-free check out, would greatly boost the revenue of supermarkets.

With the proposed innovations, the team believes that supermarket chains would benefit greatly due to the increased efficiency of shopping and check out and in turn, provide a better customer shopping experience, which would ultimately boost the reputation and revenue of the chain.

Methodology

Primary research such as interviews, surveys and questionnaires will produce conclusive results but will require more time to complete. Secondary research such as reviewing sources was therefore used to collect the relevant information for completion of the study.

Secondary Research

The team started with deductive research by coming up with ideas and suggestions on how the revolutionary trolley will be useful to supermarket consumers. The team did research on the products strengths, weaknesses and other potential changes that can be applied to enhance the product after recognizing the key observation.

The team carried out extensive analysis after agreeing on the proposals for improvement and would be used to check around the space for changes and forms of change needed to fix the problem. Relevant articles such as RFID implementation and self-checkout trolley systems were used to justify the team’s proposed design.

The team decided that doing case study analyses were relevant and useful in gaining detailed accounts from individual psychologically important case studies of articles. Other forms of analysis were not used as it was too time-consuming.

The benefits of doing analyses of case studies provide much detailed information that can be obtained as compared to other research methods. Furthermore, the collected data is usually very comprehensive and in-depth, which can not be recreated practically. In addition, these case studies help to modify theories and create new hypotheses. However, case studies may contribute evidence or data being collected over longitudinal research that may not always be important or particularly useful. This can lead to prejudice in that article's data collection.

Concluding Statement

In conclusion, the integration of an RFID scanning system into the shopping trolley and the implementation of a better membership system would allow customers to shop much more efficiently while having a better shopping experience. With RFID scanners built into the trolley, customers are able to self-checkout much quicker as their total bill has been tracked in real-time, thus reducing queue wait times. The proposed membership system would allow customers to enhance and optimise their shopping experience, by acquiring item information such as in-store location and product availability, through the loaned tablet.

By providing customers with a more efficient shopping experience, the proposed innovations would promote an increase in revenue for the supermarket chains.