The Future of Supermarket Shopping?

I'm sure many of you have seen this IBM television commercial. In the commercial, a young man, let's call him "street-smart" for lack of a better word, enters a supermarket. This coat-dressed kid walks hurriedly travels through the grocery stuffing food items in his inner coat pockets. He peers at other grocers out of the corner of his eye and his face seems to reveal the fact that he is committing a crime.

As this individual exits the supermarket, he is confronted by a security official. Clearly, we are led to believe up to this point that this person is shopping. But, the officer merely tells the kid that he forgot his receipt.

So, what happened in this commercial? Supposedly, due to innovations by IBM, people can exit grocery stores passing through full-size scanners. These scanners can, in the blink of an eye, tally the cost of all of the items carried by an individual via the items' barcodes. In that same split second, the computer system behind the scanners prints a receipt for the customer.

As I watched this commercial, I thought - why not take this concept one step further? Companies such as WebVan (http://www.webvan.com) claim to allow you to shop completely from home. You never have to enter a supermarket; you just need to tell WebVan what items you want purchased and this company will go to a supermarket (or its distribution warehouse), find the items and deliver them to you. I have not personally used this service, but my guess is that you pay for the items via credit card over the web, and perhaps you can tip the delivery-person a few dollars for their trouble.

So, why didn't IBM show this process? Why did they not take the logical step further towards a true e-business realization and show users shopping from home? There may be some hidden messages in this commercial, and then again, maybe I'm reading too much into a 30-second promo spot. You decide.

By showing the individual entering a supermarket instead of shopping from home, perhaps IBM is stating that their e-business innovations will affect everyone, whether or not they use a computer or PDA device. You don't have to be digital to feel the hand of e-business. Every fact of life, whether or not it is directly connected to computers or not, will be affected.

Or, by showing the supermarket with several shoppers and a security officer, IBM is trying to cater to people who still like the human side of commerce. You know, these are the people that still go to bank tellers instead of using ATMs. You may be one of these folks who just do not trust computers with your money, and lets be honest, the whole Y2K scare is not helping matters much.

As a sidenote, here's a message for budding e-commerce developers: do not forget the human side to buying items. People still like to examine goods, try on clothes, and some people actually like to talk to store employees. Perhaps many businesses ignore this fact, and, as a result, 70% of shopping cart purchases are aborted prior to the end result

Then again, perhaps the supermarket was chosen because showing a person buying items from their own home is too boring. In today's world of advertising with gerbils being thrown from cannons and shoppers finding themselves stuck in elevators thanks to HAL-like computers, IBM may have just wanted to show a commercial with a little action.

There's a lot to think about after watching this one, short commercial message. You can obviously think about why this one activity was chosen. You can also think about why this e-commerce activity was not taken to its logical conclusion - was IBM trying to send us a message that we need to keep people in mind when developing commerce systems? Perhaps what's missing from today's fast-paced e-commerce world is a friendly security officer that's willing to pass a receipt along to a forgetful patron. Now that's customer service.

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