The self-service industry continues to grow as customers become savvier with technology. In many industries, customers voluntarily participate in self-checkout, whether at the grocery store, gas station, movie theater, or other venues. Grocery stores in particular have seen enormous growth in self-checkout lanes. Oftentimes, customers with just a few items to purchase can avoid long lines by using self-checkout stations, while the stores themselves can use fewer staff than is required at typical checkout lines. In fact, the practice of self-checkout has become so prevalent that lines are now beginning to develop even at these stations. As a result, some venues are allowing customers to begin the process of checking out while browsing the aisles of the store. With this in-aisle checkout process, a customer may use a device to scan items as they shop. Once the customer reaches the checkout line, there is no need to re-scan the items, and the customer may simply pay for the transaction and leave, at times after being subjected to minimal auditing.
Problems still exist with this new approach, however. For example, many items in grocery stores do not have individual barcodes that may be scanned in aisle. Additionally, some items require further action, such as weighing, before their price can be determined. The in-aisle devices, however, are often not equipped to perform these additional actions leaving the customer to complete the actions at checkout. These additional actions, such as weighing products, can be some of the most time consuming actions associated with checkout. Therefore, the lines still may be long causing delays for the customers at checkout.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide systems, methods, apparatuses, and computer program products for facilitating in-aisle scanning that avoid the above, and other, drawbacks associated with the current art.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds