How often has it happened that you are looking for a particular item in a store (grocery / electronic appliance / home appliance / hardware) and have had trouble finding it, or have had to run behind a store-rep to tell you where it is?
My suggestion is to have "search engines" (kiosks) deployed at various parts of a store, that help you search, using keywords, for the item you're looking for. Since the store maintains the layout of the items (plannogram), it should not be difficult for the search to return with a list of matches, and the aisles/sections in which they are found.
This can save a lot of walking-around-the-store. Especially for someone like me who can't remember which aisle I picked up salt, the last time I needed it.
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This is such an obviously great idea that there must be a powerful incentive not to implement it. I imagine it is that stores have found that forcing people to wander around to find their item pays off more in additional sales than any benefit from increased customer satisfaction. O
I love the idea, but I'm with GaborKiss on this one. Something that retailers hate is shoppers like myself, who go into a store knowing exactly what he wants, gets it and goes straight to the checkout line. They want you to get lost in the kitchen gadget section when you came in for a new pillow, and oila'!, you've bought more than you wanted to.
One grocery chain I went to did this, although they hade one kiosk at the front of the store to do it.
To be more specific, you could address sheves with a number, and show that, with the layout of the store.
Also would be handy to enter the SKU, and know if it is in that store or not.
They could have store maps that you could download on your way in to your pda. Then there would be no need to look for those search terminals like we need to do for the price check scanners.
i think that these kiosks are a good idea, except that i think that most stores would not invest in enough of them, and they would be quite long, and somewhat inconvenient to find, somewhat like the pricecheck, i think a better idea is to have the map on the store website, you can upload your whole shopping list, and print out a map of the store with each of your items highlighted in position. this also eliminates the hassle of running back across the store when you realize that you forgot something in an isle you already visited because you can see ahead of time what you need in each isle.
What about using a mobile device (a phone) that's GPS enabled with a wireless application that allows search by item adding directions to the shelf location.
At a minimum, there should be a store map in a transparent sleeve on the flap at the back of every shopping cart. Ideally, it should also have a printed index of products, in alphabetical order, with their shelf number alongside.