Authors:
Susan Brosnan, Jessica Snead, Patricia Hogan, Daniel Goins
Abstract:
The present invention relates to helping customers who wish to be environmentally friendly and know that certain behaviors can help but are not clear how to identify products and actions that support this desire. The solution is to use information stored about the product and behaviors of the shopper during that Trip to provide feedback to the Shopper at the Point of Sale to teach and encourage behaviors.
Background:
Many folks wish to make environmentally good choices in a store, but they don't always know how to identify products that have more Positive Environmental Impacts. Folks are also busy and sometimes just need to be reminded that if they picked a different product option, they would make less of a harmful impact on the planet. Some information is printed directly on packaging, but without nudging and on-the-spot education, it's difficult to break habits. Reading about it in the news doesn't always make that clear association with small daily habits that could both help the environment and encourage manufacturers to make better choices, because their negative impact products aren't selling as well.
The solution is to help push direct feedback to customers while they are shopping, so they can decide to stick with their purchase or make an alternative selection with useful information on the spot.
For example, you might have multiple choices of fresh fruit and the raspberries from an offshore location look delicious, but getting a nudge about their carbon impact might encourage you to purchase local apples instead. Or you might grab the first applesauce jar, but getting a reminder that plastic is much harder to recycle might encourage a person to change and select the glass jar instead. Or a customer might pick the milk from the back of the refrigerator with the latest expiration date and then be reminded that this will lead to food waste for the store and encouraged to buy an older milk carton.
Description:
The predominant way we envision that Products will be judged for an Environmental Scoring information would be through video or still images of the products as the Customer is shopping or checking out. The flow would be like the following:
Customer selects a product from the shelf and adds to the Mobile shopping or Smart Cart
- The Image (or bar code) from the mobile shopping is processed by the Environmental Scoring engine
- If appropriate, feedback is provided to the customer based on the positive or negative environmental impact on the shopping screen
Alternatively, the customer might have signed up just for text notifications
- In this embodiment, the store cameras could see what the customer was picking up
- The Cameras in the store could have the full Order Picture (using anonymous tracking)
- Alternatively, they might just provide pinpoint feedback based on the specific item
- Then the store system would send an SMS Message to the Customer's registered device with encouragement/feedback
These types of information would be gleaned to determine an Environmental Score
- Manufacturing location, which indicates how far the product has traveled between the origin and the store location
- Supply Chain path, which would show how the product was shipped (train, truck, air, etc.)
- Packaging type -- for example, glass would generally rate higher than plastic
- Best Buy Dates -- for example, dates closer to expiration would score better, since that decreases store food waste
- Company history of environmental activism
- Local Farmer or Local Small Business manufacturer
The Feedback could be something like
- Image, such as a Happy or Sad face, next to the product purchases on the receipt
- Image, such as a Happy Face, that gets larger or fills in as the shopper selects more items that have a Positive Environmental Impact products
- A score that could allow the shopper to compete with friends, neighbors or family and gamify the experience
- A score that shows where the shopper’s environmental impact is related to some metric, like a target or average in your area
- Suggestions of ways to make a more Positive Environmental Impact choice for a product
In another embodiment, this could also all happen at a traditional Fixed or Self-Service Point of Sale.
- In this case, a shopper is less likely to go back into the store to make changes to the current basket
- The feedback would still happen on the screen, but then it would also be stored in the profile for any Frequent Shopper
- Many stores send advertising emails each week to Loyalty Customers, so they could tailor that to Positive Environmental Impact Products in an area that was less positive on previous trips
- The store could also remind the shopper upon entering the Store the next time about options to improve Positive Environmental Impact, such as reminding them to aim for older products or aluminum packaging.
TGCS Reference 4696
