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By Gadi Graus, CEO Cust2Mate, on Unite.ai,  June 26, 2024

Article from: https://www.unite.ai/redirecting-humans-with-machines/

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By Calcalist, June 4, 2024

The Israeli Cust2Mate smart cart from the Nasdaq-traded company A2Z won the award for the best smart cart for 2024 at the RetailTech Breakthrough Awards, an international competition that takes place every year and examines all the technological developments in the world that pertain to the world of retail. The judges in the competition examine the various developments based on the level of innovation, performance, the user experience and operation, the functionality, the value of the development and its impact on the problem it is trying to solve.

Today, 87% of consumers prefer to shop in stores that allow independent payment without going through the cash registers, and according to the judges, the Cust2Mate smart cart was able to provide the best solution for this for 2024. The Cust2Mate smart cart allows the consumer to shop smartly, friendly and securely and pay at the cart without standing in lines at the cash registers. In addition, the cart scans the products placed into the cart, allows independent weighing, offers personalized deals, and assists customers in making economical, functional and educated decisions based on specific needs such as food preferences, kosher and allergies. On the part of the retailer, the cart makes it possible to provide an upgraded user experience, to get a more accurate understanding of customer behavior and needs and use a personalized marketing platform within the stores.

Also, the company’s latest development, Cust2Mate 3.0 carts, includes a detachable panel with a 13.3-inch interactive touch screen, which can be mounted on traditional carts and turn them into smart carts. The latest development also provides an answer to the phenomenon of theft, and with its help it is possible to identify abnormal behavior with the help of artificial intelligence, sensors and other advanced technologies.

The competition is held on behalf of Tech Breakthrough, an American organization with an international presence that specializes in market research and market intelligence in the field of technology and innovation.

Gadi Graus, CEO of Cust2Mate, said: “Winning a major international award that takes into account all the startups and technological developments in the world of retail is an amazing recognition of how innovative our company and the team and a testament to the potential of our solution to transform the world of retail. We work diligently to continue and push forward our smart cart, and we will not stop until consumers from all over the world can enjoy an innovative, convenient, informed and faster shopping experience.”

Article from: https://www.calcalist.co.il/article/h1p53b24c

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I recently had a conversation with Yaniv Zukerman from Cust2Mate about the transformative impact of technology on retail shopping. We explored the development of smart shopping carts designed to simplify the shopping process for consumers while enhancing operational efficiency for retailers. Yaniv shared insights on how these carts can address challenges like inventory shrinkage and optimize store performance through strategic data use.

Yaniv also highlighted how their technology integrates features of online shopping into the physical store experience. As you maneuver the cart through store aisles, it provides personalized recommendations and promotions tailored to your shopping habits. This technology not only customizes the shopping experience but also creates new avenues for stores to connect with their customers.

Our discussion covered the implementation of these smart carts in locations like Morton Williams, with prospects for broader adoption across the Americas. It’s exciting to consider how such innovations could redefine the future of retail, making it more interactive and attuned to consumer preferences.

The conversation offered a glimpse into what might soon become a regular feature in supermarkets worldwide.

Mike Giambattista 

Yaniv Zukerman is CMO at Cust2Mate and I’ll let Yaniv give a better description of Cust2Mate’s unique offering. But I had a chance to get introduced to the product and the thinking behind it at NRF earlier this year, and one I don’t claim to any real expertise in that field, but even without any real expertise in the field I can tell that, uh, from a layman’s perspective it’s kind of a game changer. Uh, my opinion only. But, um, thank you for joining me, really appreciate it. Um, hopefully you can do a better job of describing uh, the, the product, and it’s kind of uh place within the broader grocery market space than I have.

Yaniv Zukerman 

So first, mike, thank you for having me, thank you for the opportunity.

I always like talking about our product and solutions and technology and everything that has to do with retail and customer experience per se. It’s kind of a habit for me for many years. So I think we have a solution. First, it’s a smart shopping cart. It’s a cart, it’s smart. It helps you do your shopping in a better way, in a faster way, with better ease, more value, less time being spent, less friction.

That’s from the point of the shopper, but it also helps the business of the retailer, both, and certainly because we help make their customers happier, and happier customers are more loyal customers, and more loyal customers eventually contribute to the top line and your bottom line over time, but also immediately, quite immediately.

But more than that, we enable them to open the door for new business models. Business models we help them optimize their in-store operations, first by automating the checkout to a very large extent, but also by using the data that is being collected throughout all the shopping journeys of all the customers using our carts, which is a goldmine, as you can expect. And another issue that we help them with is the issue of inventory shrinkage, of retail theft. We all know how dire the situation right now is out there, and this is another thing we help. We cannot help them completely raise this issue, but we hope them protect their transactions and their equipment the smart card equipment in a better way, especially when you compare it to other alternatives. So better results, better business results, better customer experience, better operations and bottom line.

Mike Giambattista 

I’d like to see our solution as something that we help our retail customers bring the online experience into the physical store, into the physical shopping experience and correct me if I’m wrong here, but as I understood it, Cust2Mate’s smart cart solution is essentially a modular one, in that it can be used and kind of bolted onto, if you will, any existing shopping cart. It doesn’t require a full re-inventorying of the fleet of shopping carts. Basically, whatever the fleet looks like right now, you can bolt this smart cart solution onto it and it works really well. So one I think that’s a pretty significant differentiator and I’m only speaking anecdotally here from my very limited experiences. But we have a grocery store which we frequent here. It’s a pretty good one.

They’re pretty progressive who implemented a smart cart, I’m going to say about six or eight months ago, and I’m not going to say who they are because it’s terrible, it’s just a horrific user experience. I mean, almost from the first interaction with it. You’re kind of going this is just awful and it just gets worse from there. Um, and now that I had something to compare it to from my experiences with with you and guy at NRF, it’s remarkable that the difference, the different ways people are coming at this particular problem, um, so I wanted to talk a little bit about how custom mate has thought about the user experience here, because, uh, I’m sure that that the smart cart solution at my grocery store also delivers, um, a gold mine of of data. Um, I mean, they kind of all do that. It is not a modular solution like Cust2Mates is, but the user experience is utterly awful. It’s just terrible. And yet the user experience with Cust2Mates is stellar. There’s a big difference in there, so maybe we can talk about the thinking that went into that.

Yaniv Zukerman 

Sure, sure, with pleasure. So I think the first or even our own first generation of cards did not did such a stellar job as you mentioned right now. It was quite similar to the ones that you have experienced and many of our competitors still offer to the market, which are big, bulky, fully integrated, very hard to handle, very hard to maneuver within the store, and a lot of effort was put into the technology, as many of them are coming as technology companies rather than retail or customer experience-focused companies and retail or customer experience focused companies, and hence the results that you’ve just described your own personal result. So we’ve learned from our own experience and from our customers, both the retailers and the end users, what needs to be remedied, what needs to be changed in order to improve the customer experience, and that led us eventually to the development and the introduction of our smart cart 3.0 generation, which is a game changer, as you mentioned. It’s completely different and it’s modular. And, first and foremost, as we think about customer experience, we think of the end customer experience, but also the retailer experience and the employee’s experience how they need eventually to operate the carts within the store, because even if the customer would be satisfied and the employees wouldn’t like our solution. That won’t work either, so that’s another thing we need to consider. So the first conclusion we arrived to pretty immediately is that we need to make it much more agile, less heavier, less bulky, something that resembles as much as possible the existing smart card. So we thought, okay, let’s take an existing smart card and just build on top of that without the need to change this, and that immediately led us to the understanding that we need to, eventually, the smart card. Most of the smart card lies within the smart panel, both. The screen is there, the computer is there, the sensors are there, everything is almost there, and now we just need to place it on wheels. The integration, of course, is digital. Okay, you’re doing via communication with the IT systems of the retailers.

So we transform this, and what we’re providing right now is a kit, a kit, a smart kit, which encompass the smart panel and the security scale, the security scale. That is one of the layers that we provide to mitigate the inventory shrinkage issues which I’ve mentioned before. This is a kit that you can mount on top of existing carts within a matter of. If you are very well trained, it could take you five minutes. If you are less trained. Let’s say, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and that’s it, and the cart is ready to go. And this is a game changer. On top of that, it makes the entire logistics of transforming this, installing this, maintaining this, much more streamlined than anything else. It helps us lower the costs Eventually.

If we want to be successful with the customers and the customers, we need to provide a good ROI. So we had to lower the costs, especially when we are in a competitive situation, and it enables our customers to scale up at their own pace. They can start big, they can start small, but they can really scale up because eventually we don’t need as much space as the bulkier carts need. It’s much more modular, it’s much more small. The floor space that is needed is significantly smaller. And, last but not least, now the customer can take the cart outside of the store. So this is really one nice frictionless shopping process, from the moment he steps into the store, takes our cart with the panel, mounts the smart panel, does its shopping check out on the cart and it can leave outside with the cart. So that’s really the bottom line of what we intended to and what we are achieving right now.

Mike Giambattista 

Yeah, again, I’m not going to divulge the name of your competitor. Actually, I intentionally forgot it.

Yaniv Zukerman 

I can sense who it is Geographically wise.

Mike Giambattista 

I can imagine who are these people, but in this case it’s so counterintuitive that they actually have an employee dedicated to showing customers how to use the cart. When you pick it up, there’s somebody who kind of gives you an orientation, and then that person is available and kind of follows the smart carts around to help customers as needed. So on the one hand, great, you’re providing that extra kind of human touch, but ideally you wouldn’t need that. Ideally you’d like to have something that’s so intuitive and so easy to figure out, and when you run into a hiccup, there’s a solution. Right there those people end up dealing with is just the complaints and frustrated customers who are, you know, kind of giving up on their, their expensive solution there.

So, yeah, my experience at NRF and let’s face it, NRF is Disney world for retail technology it’s every shiny object and bell and whistle that you can imagine that’s available right now in the marketplace is there, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s just, you know, it’s really easy to get a shiny object-itis and be taken by the next uh, uh, sparkling item. Um was remarkable to me about, about custom made solution, though, is it’s not that it’s not just this shiny object, it’s actually. I would just call it a very common-sense set of tools that help customers solve common-sense kinds of everyday problems. So I thought it was anything but a shiny object. I’m sorry if that offends anybody on your team, but I think it’s practical On the contrary, that was the intention.

Yeah, I, I was. It was so well executed that, um, when, uh, your CEO was first introducing me to the product, um, I think he wanted to to give me a full demo of how this works, but ultimately he didn’t need to. It was kind of self-evident this is what it is, this is what it does, and that, to me, was pretty remarkable.

Yaniv Zukerman 

Yeah, and I think one of the reasons for this is not only the technology, as I mentioned. Basically, Cust2Mate has been established by a group of people, visionary people, but people that are coming from the retail industry, retail technology, industry. The combined experience of the people in the executive team here, but even more than that, is hundreds of years of experience in retail, retail technology. So we really understand retail, we understand our. So we really understand retail, we understand our customers and we understand the customers of our customers, because all of us have been involved in either developing, servicing, delivering marketing solutions to that particular domain. So it’s not about the technology, it’s about a good solution that is intuitive, that makes sense. As you said, it needs to make sense, it needs to make sense operationally, it needs to make sense on the customer experience front and it needs to make sense also financially.

Mike Giambattista 

Eventually, uh, if you’re able to talk about some of the things that Cust2Mate is working on right now for the next iteration of the product, because you mentioned this, I think this is a version 3.0. Um, I’m not familiar with with prior versions of this, but, um, you know, how do you make something like this better? Is it just a matter of incremental tweaks and improvements, or is there anything significant coming down the pike?

Yaniv Zuckerman 

So there are a few avenues that we are following in order to improve our offering. First and foremost is things that are operational and has to do with scale and our ability to move to a much more significant scale. It has to do a lot with our ability to move to much more significant scale. It has to do a lot with cost reduction, which is a big effort because, as I said, eventually it needs to make sense, also financially, to our customers and cost reduction will help us help them achieve this. And it’s interesting you’ve mentioned our competitors beforehand. If it’s expensive, eventually it won’t become a mainstream solution. So they would have five, ten carts per store at most. But in order to make it significant, a real game changer, you need to have a significant amount of carts at the store, completely agree. Significant amount of cards at the store Completely agree. At least, I think the sweet spot would be about 30, 40% of the cards or 30 or 40% of the transactions at the store that would go through the smart cards. So you need to reduce costs. This is one avenue. The other avenue has to do with the addition of many other value-added services. That makes sense.

Let’s talk about more content, about the different products. Let’s talk about navigation within the store. We can talk about product recommendations. Basically, it’s very simple. We just need to look at most of the services that people are used to when they do their online shopping and just bring it to the physical store, to our cart. So this is the roadmap for us.

Basically, we’re trying to copycat, if you will, the same experience into our carts and add on top of that everything that is particular to the fact that you are physically there. So location-based services, so offers whether it’s advertisements or promotions or coupons that are either location-based or based on the actual activity that you do in real time, right now at the store and makes much more sense because they bring actual value at the right time at the right place. That’s another avenue, and the third avenue is, of course, using the accumulated data to further improve the operations of our customers, of our retailers and their partners, whether they would be advertisers or companies that provide coupons or other types of services, in order to ever improve, optimize the way they offer products, the way they merchandise them, where they put them at the stores. I’ll just give you one example we can track which products are being looked after without finding the product application. If so many people are looking for the same product, it means that they can’t find it, so maybe you can reconsider where to put it at the store.

Mike Giambattista 

I’m not saying this is the only parameter, but just one simple example saying this is the only, the only parameter, but that’s just one simple example. The um, the ancillary revenue opportunities seem significant as well, and and what I’m thinking of is and I think you just alluded to it, the you know being able to present messaging sponsored messaging, if you will, uh to customers based on their location within the store, based on their habits as you know them, because I believe that Cust2Mate’s cart solution understands who the customer is. There’s some sort of tie-in with the loyalty program.

Yaniv Zukerman 

Through our integration to the point of sale and loyalty uh systems of our retailers. We do not manage their cost, it’s their customers, it’s their data. But we do integrate in order to facilitate both all the loyalty benefits and of course we need to integrate with the point of sale system.

Mike Giambattista 

So, via this, yes, of course, so that, so that data is available to users of Cust2Mate to deploy it either for couponing, messaging, promotions, directional guidance, whatever happens to be, as well as the data that’s derived from that. So it seems to me like there’s an awful lot of opportunity for partnerships. I can imagine, um, you know, the CPG world would be vitally interested in this product. Um, I mean, case in point, and I’m sure you know this the retail media networks have exploded. There’s just gobs and gobs of money being moved from other, more traditional digital channels into retail media right now.

It’s not expected to slow down and it seems like custom mate has just opened up a new channel within that ecosystem that could be really, really interesting, depending on how connected the cart really is and you know how well it could say serve ads from a network if that was something you wanted to. But it seems to be wide open there, as long as we’re blue-skying the possibilities. What other things are on the drawing board for ancillary uses?

Yaniv Zukerman 

So, as you mentioned, retail media network and, by the way, if you’re free, I’m hiring people for our business development team you just nailed it and said it perfectly. So this is really it could be a game changer to how you do media and how do you do advertisements personalized advertisements at the physical store, because we know what are the existing solutions at the physical stores. You know digital screens, which it’s fine, but it’s not personal, it’s not context driven. It’s very difficult to measure the impact of those campaigns and, again, we provide, as you perfectly said, it’s another channel, it’s another channel for the retail, it’s very similar to the e-commerce channel, but it’s being operated at the physical store, but it’s it’s it’s an additional channel and I think that could be a real game changer, usher in retail media networks in a significant way, in a very effective way, into physical stores.

We can provide triggers and specific data in real time about what’s going on within each and every shopper journey using our carts. Shopper journey using our carts, logging in, paying. Every product added to our carts is being identified and that could trigger something. The location of the cart of the store could trigger a location-based, relevant ad. Think about private labels. Retailers can promote their own labels by using this, presenting the logic If you scan a CPG brand, maybe you can try our own private label substitute and vice versa. So, working with retail media platforms and networks, this is a natural evolution. This is something we are working on and I think that could bring tremendous value both to, as you said, to the CPG brands gaining the satisfactions of the customers, because now they’re not being spammed, they’re getting actually value-adding offers. So larger shopping baskets, but also additional revenue streams coming from the advertisers, which are very profitable.

Mike Giambattista 

What strikes me most about the possibilities here is how uniquely relevant the messaging could be. And again, I haven’t seen this function on Cust2Mate’s product actively, but I can imagine that if once plugged in operational, into the right retail media networks, that you could be serving up things that are I would just call hyper relevant, because it’s no longer I mean you. You’ve literally dialed it back to, uh, the most immediate uh that you could derive from a shopping experience, and those could all be triggers for some sort of messaging. So I think it’s wild Really looking forward to seeing if that’s live now. I’d love to see a demo. If it’s not live, I want to be around when it becomes live.

Yaniv Zukerman 

Some aspects of this are already live. We have already been using this with some of our customers with our own platform, helping them to manage their own campaigns of advertisements and offers of promotions and discounts, and they have been selling this already those ad real estate to their CPG partners and gaining additional income sources due to that. But I think eventually this is something that in order to really maximize the potential there, we’ll need kind of a triangular partnership between, of course, our capabilities, our retail customers and their retail media network operators and technology providers. That would really nail it and maximize the overall potential there.

Mike Giambattista 

Yeah, again, I’ll just say, as it becomes real, I want to put my foot in the door there and at least observe what’s going on, because I think it’s the potentials just wild. Uh, again, anecdotally, I was, uh, a colleague of mine. Uh, lives and breathes retail media. This is his passion, and you know what he lives for. Um, but uh, we were in a conversation recently and he was telling me about how so much of CPG advertising and marketing spend was based on traditional co-op kinds of arrangements. You know, sell this much, we’ll give you this much. That kind of a thing, that equation with all of its nuances. You know, sell this much, we’ll give you this much. That kind of a thing, that equation with all of its nuances. But that as soon as retail media networks started to become a thing, as soon as CPGs started to recognize the real potential there, that those co-op arrangements went out the window so fast and they’d been entrenched you know, think about it for decades.

This is just the way it worked for the longest time and suddenly you know there’s a whole new set of rules to play by, because there’s all new potential at hand.

Mike Giambattista 

So you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that one of the great benefits to CustomMate’s technology is its ability to help retailers manage shrinkage. Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Yaniv Zukerman 

Sure. So, as I mentioned, this is shrinkage. Retail shrinkage right now is at all times high in the United States, but elsewhere as well, and there are a lot of existing technologies and solutions being used by retailers. Most of them are, let’s say, ineffective.

Mike Giambattista 

Yeah, you’re being kind, but yes, let’s say ineffective.

Yaniv Zukerman 

Yeah, let’s say ineffective. I wouldn’t use any harsher words Locking up stuff. Listen, if you want to sell stuff, you can’t put it behind a glass lock or a cage, or sell a laminate board instead of your fancy gadget, or put it behind a self-service counter. It’s not working. And if it’s working, you might protect the products, but you lose the customer, patience and time and eventually the sale and in most cases, you don’t even protect the products. Eventually, the sale and in most cases, you don’t even protect the products.

Other technological solutions can do a better job to identify patterns and identify them, but a lot of them, at least, are perceived as intrusive, has a lot of privacy issues because eventually you monitor the customers and customers don’t like to be monitored. So if I’m a customer visiting a store and I see everything is locked up and I’m being covered by dozens of cameras, so why should I get into your store? I would order online. If I’m ordering online, it’s not necessarily would be with your online. It could be with your competitors’ online e-commerce site. So they’re in the cusp of losing significant market share, and only by this fact. So we understand that, in order to face this, it can’t come at the expense of customer experience. So, first, customer experience is the key and while maximizing customer experience, we need to make sure that as much as possible we mitigate shrinkage. And first and foremost, we need to mitigate unintentional errors, which are a big chunk of shrinkage eventually. A big chunk of shrinkage eventually other autonomous types of checkouts is just unintentional mistakes of you missed, you forgot to scan something, you forgot to put it back. Those errors accumulate to a lot of dollars eventually. So if you do it along the way, when you do your shopping with the cart and the cart makes sure that everything that you scan is being put into the cart and the right product is being put into the cart, and eventually you pay for everything that you’ve been putting into the cart. So you’re not. We can’t help them eliminate the problem altogether, but we can really mitigate it and minimize it, certainly taking away the unintentional errors and also deter intentional errors from people who are trying to steal.

We are doing this by using different types of technologies, fusing different types of technologies. That has to do with the identification of the products and validation of the products that are being scanned and put into the cart. First, barcode scanner that you scan each product and then you place it in the cart. A security scale that is being mounted at the bottom of the cart and make sure that the weight is right. It corresponds to the product that you’ve just placed inside A camera with a computer vision and analytics software that can scan and identify the products, especially the ones that are more prone to being stolen.

An RFID reader that can read products that are being guarded, protected with RFID tags and this is something that, over time, I believe would be much more prevalent. And, last and last list, an overall software that runs analytics on the activities that are are going on throughout the journey and identifies and flags anomalies, suspicious activities that can be predefined or being understood over time, and that is being getting the employee or the guy that is responsible for this at the store is getting those flags, is getting notifications and he can go to the cart and see what’s going on and mitigate and resolve the issue. So this is our approach and it’s seamless. Again, it’s part of the shopping journey and we are sensing the products, we’re sensing the activities, we’re not sensing the shoppers.

Mike Giambattista 

Aidan McCullen it’s a brilliant solution. Are you at liberty to say where you are currently being deployed in the United States?

Yaniv Zukerman 

So currently we are deployed in the United States in an East Coast nice retail chain called Morton Williams. They have been one of our dearest customers, one of our earliest and dearest customers there, about doing pilots with some other customers, retail chains different sizes, both in the United States, in Mexico, in other countries in the Americas, currently more specifically in Central America and Latin America. We can’t really disclose at this point names, but we have a very nice and robust pipeline.

Mike Giambattista 

I love hearing it. Not only in America by the way, We’ll check back in in a future conversation to talk about the retail media network component of this, to talk about your marketplace successes and then also to talk about what version 4.0 of the smart cart was going to look like.

A link to the podcast: https://thecustomer.net/shopping-reinvented-the-data-driven-smart-cart-revolution-is-here/

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Cust2Mate has introduced an innovative supermarket trolley to transform in-person grocery shopping. While many smart cart teams are created by technologists for retailers, Cust2Mate has focused on solving the industry’s main pain points whilst alleviating the friction and frustrations of shoppers with the assistance of technology.

With thousands of carts deployed across four continents, the Cust2Mate 3.0 has a multifaceted solution that has simplified the checkout process by allowing shoppers to self-scan products and make in-cart payments. This facilitates a convenient, frictionless, ‘pick and go’ experience and eliminates the traditional checkout line or self-checkout issues.

The most recent upgrade to the Cust2Mate design includes an all-in-one detachable panel, allowing the company to use existing shopping trollies, lowering the installation and maintenance costs whilst minimizing space needed for charging and storage. CEO of Cust2Mate, Guy Mordoch, said the requirements to run the Smart Cart system were minimal.

“The goal is to prioritize ease of operation, flexibility, and low cost for the retailer, so Cust2Mate’s smart carts work with the infrastructure that a typical supermarket would already have. This includes WiFi and a power source to charge the carts,” said Mordoch.

Cust2Mate 3.0 carts are powered through a detachable control panel, which are charged in dedicated ports, located at the entrance and exit of the store. When fully charged, the panels have approximately eight hours of life, but are charged in between shopping journeys to minimize energy consumption and charging time while increasing usability.

Security was a key focus during the design phase of the Cust2Mate 3.0. With five different layers of security, the device includes AI computer-vision cameras, advanced security scales, RFID, behavior anomaly detection, and a barcode scanner that can capture and analyze physical and visual data. This technology will make the Cust2Mate 3.0 aware of any item that has been removed from the trolley. It will also ensure that the item scanned and paid for is the same item being taken home by the consumer and alert the retailer if it’s not.

Mordoch said that the Cust2Mate 3.0 was designed with the consumer in mind.

“The smart cart is highly interactive, leveraging behavioral data and on-cart touch screens to deliver personalized, context-driven, real-time product recommendations, promotions, and advertisements.”

Mordoch added that the technology can go beyond convenience by accommodating special diets and allergies, flagging items that have undesirable ingredients while also presenting relevant coupons.

“These features not only contribute to a more cost-effective shopping trip, but also add elements of personalization, safety, and reward for users.”

Supermarkets can monitor each Cust2Mate cart through a seamless, 360-degree management system. This system leverages the panel’s WiFi connectivity to oversee a store’s fleet of smart carts, enabling retailers to promptly receive notifications, resolve service issues, and obtain data that analyses customer activity, behaviors, and transactions.

Additionally, retailers equipped with robust data capabilities can extract valuable operational and commercial insights, thereby enhancing the store’s overall performance.

Cust2Mate shopping trollies are a multifaceted solution that elevates the shopping experience for consumers and empowers retailers. They also reduce costs and shrinkage through automation, personalized promotions, product recommendations, and a seamless checkout process. Cust2Mate’s products have been implemented by major retailers in countries such as the USA, Turkey, France, Belgium, and Australia.

Article from: https://supermarketnews.co.nz/global/international-news/cust2mate-transform-trolley-technology/

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Across continents, more retailers are adopting smart carts to lower their labor costs without driving up shrink.

Instacart and Associated Wholesale Growers (AWG) shared Monday (March 25) that they have expanded their partnership to offer more direct access to the former’s eCommerce and same-day delivery solutions across the latter’s member retailers. The offerings include Instacart’s artificial intelligence-powered Caper Cart self-checkout carts, bringing the collaboration to 2,300 more AWG member retailer locations.

Meanwhile, A2Z Smart Technologies Corp. announced Friday (March 22) the first deployment of its Cust2Mate 3.0 smart carts, scheduled to go live in April in Israel’s Yochananof supermarket chain, with France’s Monoprix and the United States’ Morton Williams to follow.

Cust2Mate CEO Guy Mordoch told PYMNTS last year that the company sees a 30% increase in average basket size when shoppers use smart carts over regular shopping carts.

As retailers look to unify their digital and brick-and-mortar presences, smart carts can help bridge the gap. For instance, these carts can gather data on customer behavior, such as purchasing patterns, popular products and peak shopping times, much as eCommerce channels can track engagement. Retailers can analyze this data to gain insights into customer preferences and optimize their merchandising strategies, pricing and inventory management.

Moreover, by understanding individual shopping habits and preferences, retailers can deliver targeted marketing campaigns and personalized promotions to customers across digital and physical channels. This tailored approach can increase customer engagement, loyalty and sales.

Plus, smart carts streamline the shopping process by enabling customers to scan items as they shop, reducing the need for traditional checkout counters while mitigating some of the risks posed by other methods of self-checkout. Specifically, smart carts equipped with sensors and security features can help retailers combat theft and shrinkage while still reaping the operational benefits of self-checkout.

According to Caper, its cart has “anti-theft” features, equipped with “tools to help prevent shrink.” Plus, Cust2Mate claims to work against “the growing shrinkage epidemic” with features such as “computer vision, RFID and AI anomaly behavior detection” in addition to the standard-issue scanning and weight sensor capabilities.

These moves to expand smart cart adoption come as retailers are forced to pivot away from traditional self-checkout kiosks amid widespread losses.

Still, retailers see a strong need for self-checkout solutions. PYMNTS Intelligence research from 2022 found that 60% of U.S. retailers saw self-service kiosks as being key to shopper loyalty, and 40% said the same about the ability to scan products and pay without standing in line.

Many consumers also seek out these kinds of in-store digital technologies, such that these kinds of digital upgrades can improve their shopping experience. PYMNTS Intelligence’s study “2024 Global Digital Shopping Index: The Rise of the Click-and-Mortar™ Shopper and What It Means for Merchants” found that 25% of consumers are digitally assisted in-store shoppers, using technology to improve their brick-and-mortar experiences.

Article from: https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2024/retailers-expand-smart-cart-adoption-boost-self-checkout-lower-theft/

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Tomorrow’s tech comprises smart devices to aid consumers’ shopping excursions, the further proliferation of in-store and intra-distributor/warehouse AI, and the further evolution of self-checkout. Here’s a glimpse of what some retail experts foresee for tomorrow’s retail.

Self-Checkout – Down But Far From Out

The proliferation, perceived death, and media blowback of self-checkout has been well documented by The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Food Institute. 

“Self-checkout is a part of the technology journey consumers and retailers are on, but it’s not the destination,” said Andy Keenan, executive vice president and general manager at Advantage Solutions, to TFI in the article linked above, noting that as the technology advances, how grocers and retailers implement it will depend upon how consumers respond, and despite the challenges it presents, the number of self-checkout lanes has increased by 10% in the last five years.

Some see a way forward; others see technology leapfrogging the lane entirely. It’s a classic case of the Schrodinger’s Cat paradox – until the future tech is definitive, self-checkout will both thrive and struggle in equal measure; it all depends who you ask.

“Self-checkout exploded in the pandemic, but with the increase of retail theft, retailers are recognizing that the costs of shrink associated with fewer associates outweighs the value of reducing labor costs,” Gottlieb noted. “In the future, retailers will begin to move away from self-checkout and shift their focus towards loss prevention.”

Another way of thinking about it is that the notion of self-checkout may move from the retail floor kiosk directly to the retail consumer’s pocket by way of the smartphone. Sarah Jarvis is Propositions Director at Eagle Eye, a retail personalization and development company, who sees shopping becoming more of a “phone out” activity as technology accelerates toward a truly seamless omnichannel experience.

“We envision that smartphones will become customer companions that augment the in-store experience,” she told TFI. “Retailers will develop intuitive apps that will act as personal shopping assistants, supporting customers throughout their journeys pre-, during, and post-transaction.”

For many big-box or warehouse retailers, aspects of that reality already exist. Still, the notion of self-checkout may proliferate as brands make their apps more essential to a value-driven in-store experience.

“For example, app users inside Nike stores can scan a QR code to summon shoes – in their size – to try on,” she offered. “They can ‘shop the look’ using their smartphone’s camera or checkout instantly using integrated payment options within the app. Other retailers can adopt this approach and, in the process, augment the brand relationship and the in-store experience.”

Seen most often at sports stadiums and other large entertainment arenas, the further proliferation of “just walk out” technology will continue to offer consumers what they want – just faster and more conveniently than what they’re used to today, which is hard to imagine.

Whether or not tech-forward consumers employ every digital and seamless option available to them, retailers and grocers will still have to contend with the average consumer and their No. 1 tool as they have for decades – the shopping cart. But tomorrow’s shopping cart is much more than a box on wheels.

Smart Carts Enhance Shopping Lists & Nutrition

Guy Mordoch is CEO of Cust2Mate, a smart shopping cart solutions company. Smart carts offer a digital tablet on or near the handle in which customers can upload their shopping lists before even entering the store, and from solving the salesman’s problem of the most efficient route to offering digital and in-store coupons that match a customer’s purchase history and dietary/nutrition needs, tomorrow’s cart will offer further solutions for value, convenience, and discovery.

Cust2Mate has a large commercial deployment in Israel with Yochananof, one of its largest grocery chains. Mordoch provided the following data from their deployment there:

• Average basket size up to 75% larger than regular carts & self-checkout
• 75% returning shoppers
• 43 average items per cart
• Up to four cashier lines removed

Yochananof deputy CEO Elad Harazi said, “Yochananof shoppers express great satisfaction with the shopping experience carried out using the Cust2Mate smart cart. As a chain that is always at the forefront of advanced technology in the field of retail, we are happy to continue and purchase more carts and increase the layout in more branches.”

“Smart carts serve as a bridge between the physical store and the digital world, providing an omnichannel approach that creates a holistic understanding of shoppers for brick-and-mortar grocers,” Mordoch offered. “Smart carts present physical retailers with the opportunity to replace traditional self-checkout methods … and actually digitize the shopping journey.”

Our smart cart offers shoppers a completely frictionless experience and improves their engagement and satisfaction,” he concluded. “We have seen that enabling on-cart payments (a ‘pick and go’ functionality allowing shoppers to pay using digital wallets, credit cards, PayPal, and even cryptocurrencies) streamlines the checkout process, reducing time spent on waiting on lines and effectively increasing the shopping time.”

Cust2Mate has also found success with French retail giant Carrefour. Carrefour piloted the carts in June 2023 and by December announced it would deploy over 2,400 carts throughout the country, the largest implementation to date of the smart cart technology.

AI for Operations and Supply Chain

As AI advances, operators will have to advance their hardware (and hardware budgets) along with it. And that’s just on the product end – there’s a whole other level of possibilities once spatial computing comes to the forefront of conventional retail.

“For AI to really work for the folks on the retail floor, it needs to get the physical world around it. That’s where spatial computing shines,” said Nils Pihl, CEO of Auki Labs, to TFI. “It’s not just about slapping a virtual TV screen in the air – retailers can use it to anchor all sorts of useful things in their space, like tasks and info, right where their staff need it.”

Pihl said solving this dilemma could slash training costs by billions. He knows the consumer side is flashy, “but whoever cracks spatial computing in retail – bringing AI right to the shop floor – that’s the one who may come out on top.”

Pihl points out that without spatial computing, AI’s advantages are probably skewed toward e-commerce, putting conventional brick-and-mortar stores at a significant disadvantage. Pihl said it may seem like a dire situation for brick-and-mortar stores, but the advent of spatial computing in the future will change the game once more: “Imagine a computer that truly understands its physical surroundings. This is more than just tech jargon; it’s the key for AI to effectively join the retail frontlines, revolutionizing how we manage and experience physical stores,” allowing real-world spaces to harness AI as effectively (and remain competitive with) e-commerce markets, “an essential factor in the ongoing evolution of the retail industry.”

Much is also poised to change on the supply side as well.

“In the future, AI will play a significant role in creating a leaner supply chain that doesn’t fail consumers,” said David Gottlieb, CRO at Trax Retail, to TFI. “Brands and retailers will be able to make more-exact estimates of how many products to order – which will ultimately reduce costs and ease supply chain issues.”

Gottlieb added that while many global supply chain bottlenecks have eased since the peak of the pandemic, out-of-stock issues persist from Target to Costco, Sam’s Club to Hy-Vee, and more. When items aren’t available in the e-commerce world, consumers are much more likely to spend their money elsewhere. 

To further understand how inventory and supply chain will change, Jarvis said the end of data silos must be achieved “to create a holistic understanding of each shopper, their interactions, and the stream of information being shared with them.

“We predict that barriers between sales and marketing channels will continue to blur and dissolve, allowing for a more consistent flow of data to deliver more detailed and accurate customer insights,” she added. “This approach to channel-merging and silo-ending translates to improved consumer experiences, with insights being leveraged to provide precise predictive recommendations and dynamic content customization that boost engagement.”

Jarvis noted that achieving personalization at scale and delivering individualized customer experiences at every phase of the buying journey can only happen if the most basic needs of the consumer are met – is the product in stock, and can it be delivered as promised in as brief, inexpensive, and efficient time frame as possible?

AI will help achieve that. What else it will help manufacturers, managers, and operators do is just beginning to be understood.

Article from: https://foodinstitute.com/focus/the-future-of-retail-part-2-tomorrows-tech/

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Innovation comes in waves, with good ones often fueled by key enabling trends and technologies. Waves can happen too fast, too slowly, too early, or too late. Many product innovations you thought would make it often come too soon, like Palm Pilot, or maybe too late, like Microsoft Zune. AI came on the scene in the 90’s but lacked the processing power and massive data needed to ignite a revolution. Yet others arrive at just the right time for a movement—like Uber—that would not have made it before the mass-market adoption of smartphones.

We hear about innovation all the time in business media, with “Innovate or die!” headlines—even in retail. Amazon introduced us to e-commerce way back in 1995, yet it took a pandemic to push through full adoption by supermarket chains. Self-checkout was first introduced in a Kroger store back in 1986, only to reach peak grocery saturation well into the next century.

Having first gained momentum in the early 2000s, driven by a recession-fueled quest for cost savings, self-checkout also received a pandemic turbo-charge as shoppers sought less human contact and grocers faced labor shortages. It nearly doubled from 2018 to 2021, according to FMI (Food Marketing Institute), and has continued to grow.

Not all innovations make it for the long haul, however, even those born of necessity. But countless pressures that started with COVID are compelling supermarkets to work harder to find solutions for labor shortages, supply chain issues, competition from online channels, inflation, theft, and personalization of the in-store shopping experience.

One innovation that may still hold some promise is the smart shopping cart, which turns these metal war horses scattering the landscape into high-tech wonders. After many false starts, the question remains: can automation in supermarkets and the smart cart be the digital transformation catalyst that gets grocery stores out of the last century?

Innovating Supermarkets and Grocery Stores Into The 21^st Century

Technology companies have been partnering with retailers for decades, addressing pain points with innovation focused on everything from improving shopping experiences to boosting efficiency, reducing costs, and optimizing workflows through a wide range of applications. Some examples you may have noticed while shopping include:

● POS systems that have been around for a long time, like LS Retail, that automate checkout and integrate with inventory, CRM, and other applications.

● Systems that track inventory in real-time, automate reordering, and optimize inventory distribution across multiple locations. This article explains how Berlin-based startup Freshflow leverages AI to better forecast demand.

● Smart shelving and radio-frequency Identification (RFID) monitor product levels, expiration dates, and provide insights to optimize store layouts, product placements, and promotions. Amazon Go, launched in 2018, revolutionized this idea. Customers can just pick products from shelves and get charged automatically after exiting. It’s like the EZ Pass for retail shopping.

● Walmart has been investing heavily in generative AI to improve store operations and employee experiences, and applied AI-powered simulations to forecast everything from customer patterns to supply chains.

● Pickup and delivery services cater to the growing demand for convenience and flexibility. Tom Ward, EVP, and Chief eCommerce Officer of Walmart U.S. (WMT), moved up and accelerated their planned launch during the COVID pickup peak. It has competitively positioned Walmart against Amazon as a strong hyper-local choice.

● Personalized beauty platforms like Revive, where I am Chairman, use AI-powered facial and skin diagnostics to deliver personalized, contextual product recommendations across retail channels, whether at home, in-store, or elsewhere.

● Fortune 400 SpartanNash (SPTN) improved inventory monitoring efficiencies with in-store robots equipped with computer vision and machine learning. When I talked to CEO, Tony Sarsam, he was bullish: “They [robots] are a phenomenal tool that make sure we have the right products at the right price on the shelf, and take tedious tasks away from our associates so they can do more things that are customer facing.”

● Self-checkout stations became ubiquitous since coming on the scene in the late ‘80s, but Walmart, Costco and others are now dialing back on their investments.

● Scan-and-go solutions, like ScanPayaGo, let shoppers use their smartphones to pay as they roam the aisles and pick goods. Walmart and Wegmans have dabbled in scan-and-go with mixed success from these BYOD programs.

● Smart shopping carts have been trying to enhance the shopping experience while improving store operations and data with technologies such as RFID, cameras, sensors, and touchscreens.

Smart Shopping Carts Could Leave Self-Checkout In The Dust

Supermarkets can be slow to adopt new technologies. The industry is conservative by nature. Razor-thin margins don’t leave a lot of money on the table for technology blue-skying—an innovator’s dilemma

It’s also because grocery stores are notoriously hard proving grounds for technology. Massive SKUs, logistical challenges, and fickle, often tech-averse customers frustrate efforts to upgrade the tech stack. Some innovations rely on others which may not be deployed.

While automation technologies such as POS systems and online ordering have been proven and widely adopted, others like robotics and AI-powered personalization are still in the early stages, and face challenges related to cost, scalability, and integration. RFID tags, wireless sensors, and beacons – which in turn can drive a range of applications like shelf replenishment and ad personalization – are stuck at the starting gate. Scan-and-go solutions have faced challenges with theft and consumer adoption.

Other innovations have shown great initial promise only to disappoint. E.g., the industry jumped on the self-checkout bandwagon (Grandview Research pegged the global market at $3.866 billion in 2022), hoping that it could decrease wait times and cope with labor shortages. But many are reconsidering these investments, due to theft increases, consumer frustration and maintenance issues.

Hopefully, the self-checkout experiment educated the industry about engaging consumers with a carrot—not a stick. Made me wonder, can the spending on self-checkout stations be better allocated elsewhere?

Smart Cart Malfunctions

Smart carts, too, pose many of these same challenges, and for years, vendors promised to improve the shopping experience while delivering countless business benefits with the units.

The technology offered endless possibilities, by (theoretically) equipping shoppers with information and deals while giving stores better insight into consumer behavior and preferences that could, in turn, improve layouts, merchandising, and aid with restocking and procurement.

They also can enable retailers to interact with the shopper throughout the store visit, in a real-time, bi-directional, mutually beneficial way, much like the type of personalized engagement of e-commerce.

But smart shopping carts have not made much of a dent in the market—and many ventures have failed. A report in Supermarket News said that “Implementation is still in very early stages for touchscreen-enabled ‘smart’ shopping carts.”

Some say that they have been hard to use, too expensive, increase theft, and are tough to integrate into the store environment. Also, despite their potential, it seems clear that adoption has also been challenged by the lack of a “killer app” (I bet you haven’t heard that term in a while). But it is what‘s often missing; a compelling use case—for shopper and merchant— that justifies the initial investment to get the carts in the door, where they can deliver real value and relevant benefits.

The good news is that vendors have finally listened to these concerns, done some user experience and design work, and are upgrading their wares. Smart carts are coming down in price, and some have introduced innovations that could make these “concept cars” a shoo-in to replace the dreaded self-checkout stations.

Here, the killer app is reducing wait times and labor, like self-checkout; but at the same time decreasing theft and saving time and hassle for the shopper and the retailer. Or perhaps it could create new shopping services and more pleasant experiences.

Rolling Carts Into The Mainstream—Not The Museum

At this year’s NRF, retail tech’s biggest event, there was no shortage of vendors focused on the category, from big-dog Amazon’s Dash Cart (AMZN) to A2Z Cust2Mate (AZ), Caper and Veeve. I spoke with Israeli-based Cust2Mate’s CEO, Guy Mordoch, to see if the timing and enabling tech, like my Uber example, are better aligned now to finally start delivering on the promise of smart carts.

Having been the Executive Chairman of user experience design (UX) firm AKTA, which we sold to Salesforce (CRM), I started to unpack things there. I liked that Mordoch’s team has designed around current market reluctance issues, with insights and lessons from merchants and consumers—about what’s working and what isn’t.

“Good UX design is part of our DNA,” said Mordoch. “We get constant feedback from our customers and prospects about what works best in their stores. Our UX Design team factors this in, as well as data from smart cart users themselves – each shopper is asked to grade their experience and satisfaction in a simple survey after every session. This data informs product development changes, like making a larger screen, and carts that are lighter and easier to maneuver.”

This approach has also led them to address issues like security and add functionality that can improve shopping experiences. They also seem to be making it cheaper and easier to deploy, with an attachable panel that can provide the latest AI, vision technology, and even include a scale and RFID reader on board. As shoppers pick, scan, and pay, the cart “knows” if items have been removed or added without payment and flashes a light that alerts store associates if there is an error.

Cust2Mate’s 3.0 cart addresses key pain points. “It can be a critical hub for a frictionless shopping experience that delivers more utility and benefits over time,” Mordoch added. “It blends online and physical shopping, creating a richer, more cohesive, and efficient environment for both the shopper and the retailer, while unlocking new opportunities for success, such as in-store retail media. You no longer need digital signage or beacons, as the cart’s tablet is a personal sign that guides the shopper, providing rich content and personalized offers and ads, and the tech on board always knows and reports its precise location.”

When I looked at consumer feedback, one from a customer at Morton Williams, a family-owned food retailer that has twenty stores in New York, reflected a common theme: “I was impressed with how convenient my shopping experience was using Cust2mate’s smart cart. Not only did I save money with the in-cart coupons, but I also didn’t have to wait in line at checkout. It was so easy and hassle-free; I will definitely be coming back to this store.” Pamela P.

Media and Advertising Adjacencies – A Perfect Storm

Like Uber’s launch, technology timing and adjacent markets are aligning into a perfect opportunity storm—for merchants and marketers. But what makes the market think this will all work this time? A big motivator for merchants to invest goes beyond providing shopper convenience. They need a perfect storm for the investment to have positive ROI. To help, they can tie cart platforms into their CRM, targeted marketing, personalized messaging—and lucrative in-store media networks—to turn the entire store into point-of-purchase hotspots. These adjacencies could motivate rollouts, and fill the void left by the hangover we are experiencing in the global self-checkout era.

The Supermarket News report cited the maturity of self-checkout and that 49% of surveyed grocers are interested in evaluating smart carts over the next 12 months. All respondents’ said technology is important to achieving a diverse set of business goals, including cost controls, new revenue channels, and modernizing their stores to compete in an increasingly omnichannel industry; and that in-store technologies (like smart shopping carts) represent “low hanging fruit.”

Sometimes perfect storms around efficiencies and growth can extend the platform capabilities and accelerate deployment. On efficiencies, McKinsey’s “State of Grocery in North America 2023” points to data supporting smart cart deployment, citing labor shortages as one of the biggest challenges. More proactively, on the growth side, incorporating in-store media into the mix could help fund adoption by retailers, as that sector is expected to be a $7.3 Billion market by 2032, according to Custom Market Insights (CMI). These media platforms provide brand marketers new channels to connect directly with shoppers—even down to the cart level.

It all sounds good until you get back to the UX question—will users use it? Will they jump on the bandwagon and enjoy smart-shopping experiences enough to move it from early adopter cool to a mass-market staple? In a controlled retail environment, merchants will be a key factor in motivating shoppers. If they learned anything from the self-service stick strategy that offered shoppers pain, not gain, smart retailers will motivate shoppers with a carrot.

Article from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/deandebiase/2024/03/11/how-ai-enabled-smart-carts-can-bring-retail-into-the-21st-century/?sh=3f05c51f6f32

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