A Personal Shopping System (PSS) is a system designed to help customers with their purchases in a supermarket or any kind of

self-service Self-service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when making purchases. Aside from Automated Teller Machines, which are not limited to banks, and customer-operated supermarket check-out, labor-saving of which has been described as self- ...

retailer. In this system, when the customer arrives at a supermarket, instead of picking a

shopping cart A shopping cart (American English), trolley (British English, Australian English), or buggy (Southern American English, Appalachian English), also known by a variety of other names, is a wheeled cart supplied by a shop or store, especi ...

, he/she picks an equipment ( PDA or similar) which provides a friendly

shopping Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the potential intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. A typology of shopper types has been developed by scho ...

interface. Using some known technologies (

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...

or RFID), the equipment is capable of showing on the screen all sort of information about any product available on the shelves. If customers prefer, they do not have to drive a shopping cart, which means they won't have the effort to load and push. The same way people buy in the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

will do in the store, with the only difference that they'll take their

purchase Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between ...

to home immediately instead of waiting for delivery.

References

Retail point of sale systems {{retailing-stub