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.