The future of food retailing
last week, packed with all the latest electronic features designed
to make shopping easier for the consumer and category management
simpler for the retailer. Is this the way all stores will look in
the future?
Metro, the diversified German retail group, last week opened its first so-called Future Store near Duisburg, a move which it expects to be followed by other retailers in the future.
The store - a remodelled convenience outlet operating under the Extra fascia - is said to combine all the current retail technologies under one roof. Other stores use some of these new applications, but the German company believes it is the only firm to combine all of them at the same time.
The store uses wireless devices, an intelligent scale to automatically identify and weigh fruit and vegetables, electronic shelf labelling and other shopping aids such as an automatic self check-out machine and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Other technologies will be tested in the store as they become available, all with the aim of making the shopping experience as simple and convenient as possible, Metro said.
The Future Store is the first project within the Metro Group Future Store Initiative. The retailer's partners in the initiative include Intel, the world's largest microprocessor manufacturer, SAP, the world's leading provider of business software solutions and other companies from the IT and consumer goods industries.
"The Metro Group Future Store Initiative demonstrates our company's leadership role in driving innovations in retail. It also signals our confidence in Germany as a suitable business location for the latest technologies and the development of sustainable future visions," said Dr Hans-Joachim Körber, chairman and CEO of Metro group, during the opening of the Future Store. "The use of state-of-the-art technologies at all stages of the value-added chain is an important building block in the consistent optimisation of our merchandising concepts."
Metro believes that the technologies incorporated into the Future Store will revolutionise the retailing market over the next five to 10 years. Radio Frequency Identification, for example, is used to control inventory management, allowing data to be read from computer chips that are equipped with a small antenna without line-of-sight requirements. Goods with RFID labels can be localised throughout the logistics chain at any time - from production and transportation through to the point of sale.
"From the beginning, one of our main goals for this project was to prove in a real world shopping environment how cutting-edge technology enables innovative business processes," said Dr Peter Zencke, member of the SAP executive board. "The Future Store is a clear example that technology can be a driving force behind business - it impacts manufacturers and retailers as well as the customer. Together with our partners we see this technology as an opportunity to enter a new era of co-operation in the retail and consumer products industries, an era that is now tangible with this unique project."
John Davies, vice president of Intel's solutions market development group, added: "Intel architecture and communications products help form the foundation of the Future Store project. This provides the compute power necessary to track and process the massive amount of real-time consumer and inventory data generated by RFID and the Electronic Product Code standard. The net result will be tremendous efficiency and visibility across the retail supply chain as well as an enhanced consumer experience."
"The Metro Group Future Store Initiative is a future lab that is unprecedented worldwide. Almost 40 companies from different industries are joining forces to develop the shopping experience of the future," said Zygmunt Mierdorf, a Metro Management Board member.
"The new technologies will benefit both the customers and the industry: customer satisfaction will rise because goods will be more readily available, the service is becoming more individualised and shopping more convenient. At the same time, this will boost our sales in retailing. In addition, we are able to lower our costs because our processes are becoming more efficient."
Further information about the project can be found on the Future Store website.
