Smart phone to avoid queues in supermarkets

Phil Jacob
The Daily Telegraph
June 28, 2012

Research says nearly 40 per cent of Australians have used a smart phone or iPad to shop and compare prices.

TIRED of waiting in line at the supermarket checkout? Soon you might simply be able to walk straight out the door with a trolley-full of groceries.

Supermarkets without checkout queues were yesterday heralded by the head of Coles in a move that would radically change the shopping landscape in Australia.

Radio tags on grocery items would be read as you leave the shop and the bill paid via smartphone from your credit card.

“The smart phone is going to be so much more important to people going forward,” Coles managing director Ian McLeod said at a retail forum in Sydney.

“I can envisage stores where people have all their credit details in their phone and are able to pay without physically having to go to checkout counters.”

While such an idea would be unprecedented domestically, it comes with a global precedent.

German shopping outlet Metro recently adopted a system where a radio frequency identification tag was printed on to items and was able to transmit information about a trolley’s contents.

Using credit cards synched to mobile devices, the transaction would then immediately be charged to the linked account.

“All the information we need would be on the phone data base and we could recognise you as you walk in,” Mr McLeod said.

RFID tags are already used widely in passports, library books and gadgets that let cars drive through tollbooths without cash.

Fat Prophets senior analyst Greg Fraser said if Coles decided to go down this path, it would be “hugely significant”.

“It would be significant because both Woolworths and Coles have successfully trialled self-check out and the acceptance of that technology is growing,” Mr Fraser said. “Anything that helps customer service is a winner and if it makes the time spent in a grocery store less, it would be a quantum step forward.”

The plan comes as a leading retail survey found Australians are increasingly using technology to help them shop, with nearly 40 per cent having used a smart phone or an iPad to shop.

The Australian National Retailers Association survey of 1000 people showed 38 per cent used a phone or iPad to compare prices in the past six months, compared with 27 per cent late last year.

Big W director Julie Coates said yesterday the department store had released an app last week for its toy department so customers could layby as well as purchase items.

“No other retailer in the world has an app where you can purchase and layby,” she told a Sydney business lunch yesterday.

“In our businesses we are doing innovative things but we don’t talk about it enough.”

She said it was likely that in the future department stores could be more like showrooms, where customers could inspect products before buying online.