Case Study Activity 2

I was supposed to buy different items from two grocery stores and compare how the food is processed and checking out.
I am comparing buying MaxMart and Koala where I bought one kilo of jam, raisins, bread, a kitkat chocolate bar and a bottle of juice.
Generally, Koala seems to be a more traditional grocery store compared to MaxMart which is much bigger. Therefore, MaxMart has more checkout points than Koala. Both stores however use barcodes to identify the products. There is not much different to how the checkout process goes because their systems are different.
This is a challenge for me because all the known supermarkets here in Ghana use barcodes and none use RFID system. Therefore I am not able to compare the checkout process and see if RFID system really makes things go faster. I also need to refer to personal experience as a customer when I answer questions on the exam...

Case Study Activity 1

For this assignment, I was supposed to go shopping in one of Accra's supermarket and observe how bar codes work and how the IT systems work different stakeholders.

I went shopping to MaxMart (East Legon) where they use bar codes. I am going to comment on the impact of IT systems according to different stakeholders' perspectives.

Customers' perspectives:

+ The bar codes have the name of the items, the brand and typed price on them so it helps the customers differentiate items and know how much they are going to spend in advance.
+ The use of bar codes really speeds up the check out process. I have been to a local store before where they do not use bar codes and checking out items takes much longer.
+ There is camera surveillance in MaxMart and this is a good thing for customers because there would not be many workers hanging around with suspicious looks on their faces. The customers feel like their shopping in privacy even though they are being watched because it is easy to forget that there are cameras.
- Bar codes at MaxMart are printed on a piece of paper and sticked on the item. However, when items are refrigerated, the piece of paper gets wet so sometimes the ink gets mixed which makes the writings illegible.
- Since also the bar code piece of paper is sticked on the items, it can easily removed and replaced by another one and it would be hard to see the difference.
- When I asked some customers, they said that the IT systems' impact is limited as the IT cannot replace the staff. Therefore, there are still some problems with the staff that the IT system cannot solve.

CeBIT: Supermarket of the future

As an HL student, I get to do Paper 3 which is on a case study just for HL people. This year's case study is about a supermarket that wants to update its way of working for the benefit of both the company and its customers.
Today, I have been honored to find one of the most amazing supermarket technology out now: CeBIT's SAP.
It is basically a technology that allows shoppers to use their phone number as shop lists so that when they enter the supermarket, instead of wandering around looking for the item they want, SAP looks up the items on the server, creates a map with the most efficient route to shop for all your items and shows the available brands and prices. The application is also an on-the-fly checkout system that scans the price of items as they're lifted off the shelves and charges them to an account. The only disadvantage is that it is too costly for the mass retail market since it requires RFID tagging.
This sure an awesome technology but it is yet to be implemented in stores.

Source: Australian IT