NRF’s Offbeat Rollouts, From Kiosks To Kleptomania
Written by Evan SchumanAmong the major announcements at the National Retail Federation show in New York City next week will be a major 2-D barcode trial backed by Microsoft. But the fun at a show like NRF is to find the offbeat interesting product rollouts tucked away, buried underneath the tons of not-very-significant.
Some of the more interesting show rollouts that you might otherwise miss:
"By mathematically analyzing the pixels of digitized video, the patented software scrutinizes how exactly a cashier handles each item to determine whether or not he/she has properly scanned it," the company said in a statement. "The system is capable of understanding the full set of fraudulent behaviors including when a cashier covers up a bar code by hand or purposely misaligns the scanner and item such that it is not scanned." Safeway is trying out the system.
The offering has a typical botton-of-the-basket scanner but with a twist. It uses image validation software to make sure that a product looks like what it’s barcode says it should look like. This is intended to address consumers that take UPC codes from expensive items and place them on cheaper ones.
The Self-Returns unit is the more challenging of the two. Consumers are instructed to rescan their purchases and to also scan the receipt. The merchant is given the option of adding some questions, such as the reason for the return. When done, the consumer inserts the original credit card, which is credited the amount.
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
