Research from Frost & Sullivan concludes that portable shopping devices, including those mounted on carts, may be on the verge of transforming retailing on a global scale.
According to the report, World Customer Shopping Device Markets, the portable shopping device market reached $59.2 million worldwide in 2007 and the technology is being adopted on a widespread basis in Europe and North America. The Pacific Asia and Latin American markets are also seeing the pace of adoption picking up.
"The primary driver behind the implementation of portable shopping devices or mobile self-scanners is the significant improvement in the customer's shopping efficiency and labor productivity," said Prasanna Prakash, a research analyst with Frost & Sullivan Research, in a press release. "Using these systems, customers can eliminate waiting time in queues, leading to faster checkouts while retailers can streamline operations and redeploy staff to other functions within the retail environment."
The use of portable shopping devices enables stores to move workers from the checkout to other areas of the store to "augment customer relationship management activities," according to the report.
Frost & Sullivan suggests that digital signage solutions can be incorporated into store environments to help improve interaction with consumers using portable shopping devices at the point of purchase.
Discussion Questions: What is the potential of portable shopping devices at retail? Where do you see the greater upside for the technology: reducing labor costs or growing sales? Are there particular types of devices that you think hold the greatest potential to "transform" retail?