Basket case: the shopping cart is not the humble piece of store equipment it used to be.

LITTLE DID SYLVAN GOLDMAN, OWNER OF THE PIGGLY WIGGLY SUPERMARKET CHAIN, know when he invented the shopping cart in the 1930s that his folding basket carriage, as it was called in the day, would still be around some 70 years later. Initially his invention was met with resistance: Men considered the carts effeminate and women disliked their resemblance to baby carriages.

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But this piece of equipment has evolved over the years. What was once a strictly functional item now fulfills many roles, including baby carriage, marketing vehicle and entertainment for the kids. However, retailers face a series of issues and challenges surrounding the care, retention and safety of their carts.

At first glance they may come across as whimsical entertainment for children, but Paul Wright, marketing communication manager for Salem, Mass.-based McCue Corp., maker of the Bean child shopping cart, says mothers who use kid carts shop longer and spend up to 20% more per shopping trip because the kids are entertained and not fussing. "Retailers are attracted to the Bean because they can pick and choose among a variety of colors, themes, sizes and basket styles, not to mention the increased sales," he says. "Moms like our carts because they know their kids are entertained and, more importantly, safe."

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According to Wright, the Bean's built-in safety features include sitting the child low to the ground in a recessed seat, extra plastic on the sides to prevent tipping and impact-resistant roofs to decrease the chance of injury from falling merchandise. "Some 24,000 children are injured every year in shopping cart-related accidents, and given that our kid carts are used four times as much as traditional shopping carts, safety is one of our top priorities," he says.

McCue's kid carts can be decorated as fire engines, race cars, police cars and the like, or retailers can customize them with their store branding.

FAIRLY FILTHY

Retailers appear to be facing some significant challenges when it comes to sanitizing their shopping cart fleets. Reseachers at the University of Arizona say shopping carts rank third on the list of worst public items to touch and have concluded that they contain more saliva, bacteria and fecal matter than escalators, public telephones and public rest rooms.

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John Luposello, director of marketing, commercial products for Nice-Pak in Orangeburg, N.Y., says the company has come to understand that germs are typically spread to shopping carts from the high volume of people touching the handles and from children in the baby seats. "Whether we like it or not, when people are sick they still have to eat, and when they shop for food they spread their germs on shopping cart handles," he says. Nice-Pak Commercial has responded by introducing SaniCart, a pre-moistened wipe to kill germs on shopping carts.

"SaniCart wipe is EPA-registered and has been proven to kill many bacteria and viruses, including influenza A2/Hong Kong," says Luposello. "This is of particular interest to supermarket customers during flu season."

John French, CEO of Carlsbad, Calif-based Carttronics, says that while there is no industry-wide data available on shopping cart loss, he believes that to some degree it exists in every commercial market in the world. The issue of carts leaving the parking lot has become so prevalent that many municipalities have passed laws allowing them to fine companies whose carts make their way off the lot, French says. "There is a large secondary market for carts, and the costs associated with that loss can be huge for some companies, particularly when you factor in retrieval costs," he says.

To curtail cart loss, Carttronics has developed the CAPS 4.0, no-saw-cut RF system and the 3.5v EMF system, both of which are digital and programmable. CAPS 4.0 incorporates RF capability and a new option that permits installation on sites with landlord constraints and on other large and complex sites with limited access. Both systems incorporate real-time remote monitoring and management capability of both the system and its components, including redesigned, extended-range reset controllers.

MAKING IT OBVIOUS

The ability to lock the wheels on the shopping cart has proven to be extremely beneficial in loss prevention. However, because some customers were not always aware of the locking mechanisms, retailers faced the increased possibility of injury claims. Carttronics set out to solve that issue by developing the CAPS system, which features a visible yellow brake shell that alerts customers a brake is present, along with instructional signage on the cart and at the cart corral. According to company officials, it has a low lifetime cost because of its modular, maintainable design and its two-part shell makes on-site maintenance easy and effectively doubles or triples the life of a caster.

Supermarkets have long spent money and man-hours rounding up shopping carts from their parking lots. Not only is it costly, loose carts also pose a serious risk to cars.

Studies show that while the number of carriage return areas has increased, harried shoppers don't always comply. Carttronics has designed the Smart Corral, an RFID-based system that provides loyalty credits to customers who return their carts upon completion of their shopping trip.

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The Smart Corral system, explains French, incorporates an inexpensive RFID tag on each cart, coupled with RFID readers at designated corrals and one or more kiosks. When the customer finishes shopping, she returns the cart to the corral, swipes her loyalty card or inputs her phone number and automatically receives loyalty credits.

"This idea was created around the consumer becoming part of the solution. Not only does this save retailers by dramatically reducing the man-hours devoted to cart collection, it also has the potential to reduce worker's comp and liability claims associated with collection and cut down on wayward carts causing damage to cars in the parking lot," says French. He emphasizes that the most effective way to curtail shopping cart loss and improve overall ROI is to implement multiple systems which together offer more ways to thwart problems than a single system could.

POWER ASSIST

To ease the process of cart collection and make the task safer, Dane Technologies of Brooklyn Park, Minn. came up with the QuicKART, a powered cart-return system. Company officials say it can increase cart return productivity by more than 50% while reducing the risk of injury to employees.

"Our M3 and M3 HD systems are highly maneuverable, bi-directional, power cart-return machines with dynamic braking and a load-limiting feature. It can help retailers increase productivity, reduce payroll and cart inventory," says Ted Bauer, vice president of marketing and business development.

"Needing one less employee to do cart returns means a company can save about $20,000 in operational costs annually," says Bauer. "But the more important point is when powered cart returns are used there is less physical stress on the employee. The occurrence of back injuries is greatly minimized when companies switch to a powered system." He says that with the average injury costing employers about $25,000, his system typically lets retailers recover their investment in five months or less.

The concept of in-store media has been around for a while, but there have been at least three challenges standing in the way of its success: getting shoppers to pay attention, integrating loyalty program tie-ins to boost effectiveness and the ability to make tailored offers. According to Jon Kramer, chief marketing officer at Media Cart Holdings in Plano, Texas, measuring the effectiveness of in-store media efforts to date has been taxing at best. To address this, his company has created the MediaCart, a carriage-mounted screen designed to save shoppers time and money by helping them perform comparative price checks and locate products in the store.

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Shoppers can also: view store specials in aisle order as they shop; view recipes and nutritional information; use an electronic shopping list that is presented in aisle order; total their baskets prior to checkout; and scan in the bar code on their frequent shopper cards for additional savings and tailored offers.

"Technology has changed so dramatically and quickly during the past three to five years, and those changes have been the major enabler for us to be able to deliver a system that is efficient, cost-effective and advanced compared to its predecessors," Kramer says. "What's more, we built our system with the understanding that in order for it to work it had to offer benefits and a clear value proposition to retailers, suppliers and, most importantly, consumers."

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With MediaCart, he says, retailers can analyze their merchandising, store layout and loyalty programs to better understand and serve their customers; brand marketers can access the impact of their advertising, by measuring shoppers' responses to alternative ads, offers, displays or message frequency; and consumers can be more in control of their shopping trips.

Kramer says the level of functionality can be tailored to fit the retailer's marketing and communication objectives, and the price of the cart has been structured so that the retailer pays the same for it as he would a traditional cart. The retailer can choose to have the system perform only a few functions or many, but the end result, he says, is the same: clean customer data.

"Every advertiser talks about reaching the right customer and every retailer talks about the importance of understanding his shopper's purchasing habits, and the MediaCart enables them to do that by creating a point of differentiation and increasing shopper stickiness. When shoppers invest themselves in the cart, they don't want to go anywhere else to shop," he says.

ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH

Steve Scroggins, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Rogers, Ark.-based Assembled Products Corp., maker of the Mart Cart line of carriages, says his company has created the industry's first 100% recyclable electric cart. As he explains it, by removing the PVC and eliminating the chroming process in favor of a greener powder coating method the company has been able to save more than 650,000 gallons of water and 3,500 BTUs of natural gas annually and has eliminated 13 to 15 tons of dangerous waste products.

Since its introduction earlier this year, the Xti12 Green Model 63 cart has been garnering a high level of interest from environmentally oriented retailers such as Whole Foods as well as traditional operators like Schnucks, Food Lion, H-E-B and Safeway.

"The idea was initially spurred by Wal-Mart's environmental sustainability initiative, but we quickly found there was wide-scale interest beyond the mass retailer," says Scroggins. "The cart is green not only in color, but also in its raw material makeup, design, manufacturing process and even its disposal. When the cart's life is over, all of its recyclable steel and plastic components, as well as its battery, can once again be recycled."