Research Team Develops Shopping-Cart Ad System

[Hasmukh]

Here someone is tryint to invent a new media vehicle:

Research Team Develops Shopping-Cart Ad System
Mediacart Will Soon Be Tested in a Major Northeast Grocery Retailer

By Mya Frazier

Published: August 30, 2006
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A team of 25 market researchers and engineers who once built computers for military tanks and submarines have spent the last six months observing 150 shoppers in a mock grocery store test lab in Frisco, Texas. Their aim: to find out how much advertising on shopping carts is too much.

The shopping cart ad system will deliver point-of-decision advertising, on-screen navigation and data on consumer shopping habits.


The result is Mediacart, a shopping cart ad system that runs digital ads and promotions -- via high-resolution video screens without audio -- that will soon be tested in a major grocery retailer in the Northeast.

'A shopper perspective'
"We started from a shopper perspective, because if you don't provide a tool the shopper will want or demand, then you don't have a technology tool anyone will want," said Jon Kramer, chief marketing officer of the Frisco-based company and former CEO of J. Brown, an in-store marketing agency based in Stamford, Conn.

One of the company's findings: 87% of the 150 shoppers surveyed said they would choose a retailer equipped with Mediacart over one without the carts. The reason: "They enabled them to get out of the store more quickly," Mr. Kramer said, because an on-screen navigation tool allowed them to find the aisles where, say, anchovies, ketchup or razors were stocked.

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