In the past grocery stores did not have shopping carts. A customer would ask the clerk for the items he intended to purchase and the clerk would go around the store, gather and package the items and total the price of the purchase for the customer.
When the shopping cart was first introduced to stores common wisdom was that the customers would never find the items they wanted without help. As customers grew accustomed to the layout of the stores, the stores were able to service more customers with fewer employees. The grocery cart allowed store employees to concentrate on stocking the shelves and checking out customers. The store's employees no longer had to gather the items for the customer; this resulted in improved productivity for grocery stores, which in turn resulted in lower prices for the consumer.
As this store format became accepted, one of the major labor costs for stores became checking out customers. Checkers were required to hand enter the price and to bag every item. This was a slow, inaccurate process and the major bottleneck in the grocery sales process.
This problem was alleviated by the introduction of a bar code on products and a bar code scanner at the check out lines. This allowed checkers to greatly increase their productivity and accuracy. It also greatly improved inventory management and purchasing accuracy. However, customer lines at the check-out were not significantly reduced, since most stores used this productivity advantage to reduce the number of checkers.
One of the major complaints customers have about grocery shopping is waiting in line to be checked out, pricing and bagging of each item. Most stores have numerous check out lanes; these lanes remain mostly unused except during peak hours and days, such as Saturday afternoons. This results in a large area of the store having a low utilization.
This invention is directed at overcoming these and other problems.