Shopping cart
The front part of the cart is often sectioned off in order to place household goods such as bleach, cleaning products etc.
One of the first shopping carts was introduced on June 4, 1937, the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma.
Another mechanic, Arthur Kosted, developed a method to mass-produce the carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire.
The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940 (Filing date: March 14, 1938), titled, "Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores".
Another shopping cart innovator was Orla Watson,[7] who invented the swinging rear door to allow for "nesting" in 1946.
Advice from his trusted business partners Fred Taylor, a grocery store owner in Kansas City,[11] and George O'Donnell, a grocery store refrigeration salesman, and the incorporation of Watson's swinging door yielded the familiar nesting cart that we see today using the "double-decker" approach.
The swinging rear door formed the basis of the patent claim, and was a major innovation in the evolution of the modern shopping cart.
[18] Owing to its overwhelming success, many different manufacturers desired to produce shopping carts with the rear swinging door feature but were denied due to the exclusive license issued to Goldman.
[20] The introduction of "EASY Shopper" in 2019 by Pentland Firth Software GmbH in partnership with the German retailer EDEKA represents another step in the evolution of shopping carts.
[23] Subsequent to the introduction of shopping carts and centralized checkout lines at Sears stores, the company noticed a correlating increase in sales.
[24] In 2004, British supermarket chain Tesco trialed shopping carts with user-adjustable wheel resistance, heart rate monitoring and calorie counting hardware in an effort to raise awareness of health issues.
The cart's introduction coincided with Tesco's sponsorship of Cancer Research UK's fundraising event Race for Life.
This was primarily due to the media spotlight on a Japanese research study revealing large amounts of bacteria on shopping carts.
Initial field trials showed that the prototype's context awareness provided an opportunity for enhancing and altering the shopping experience.
[31] Other cart designs also incorporate additional features such as a cup holder for cold or hot drinks or a bouquet of flowers, along with other features such as a secure shelf for a tablet computer or mobile phone to allow the use of mobile coupons and circulars, or as seen in an all-plastic design created for the Wisconsin-based Festival Foods and also used by Whole Foods Market by Bemis Manufacturing Company, all of these features, along with extra rungs on the side rail designed to attach plastic bags or carry handles for beverages.
To prevent theft, estimated at $800 million worldwide per annum, stores use various security systems as discussed below.
[39] A transmitter with a thin wire is placed around the perimeter of the parking lot, and the boot locks when the cart leaves the designated area.
Store personnel must then deactivate the lock with a handheld remote control to return the cart to stock.
In some cases, electronic systems companies have encouraged passage of such laws to create a captive audience of potential customers.
[41] A low-tech form of theft prevention utilizes a physical impediment, such as vertical posts at the store entrance to keep carts from being taken into the parking lot.
However, this method requires that the store aisles be higher than the pole, including lights, piping, any overhead signage and fixtures.
[45] Caroline's Carts are designed for aiding non-ambulatory adults or larger children, but require an additional person to push.
[46] Shopping cart manufacturers such as Caddie, Wanzl, or Brüder Siegel maintained intensive direct and indirect mutual business relations with artists, graphic designers, industrial and furniture designers such as Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, or Verner Panton since the market launch of the shopping cart - not only for new and further developments of their own shopping carts and wire basket goods, but also for advertising and PR purposes.
Olivier Mourgue,[47] Otl Aicher, Stiletto [fr][48] as well as other artists and designers had wire furniture or artwork made by shopping cart manufacturers.
[49] One of the most famous thematizations of a shopping cart in art is the 1970 sculpture "Supermarket Lady" by US pop artist Duane Hanson, which is critical of consumerism.
[50][51] In 1983, the neoist "one-man artist group" Stiletto Studios,[48] from Berlin converted a 'stray' shopping cart into an 'inverted' cantilever-wire chair on the principle of objet trouvé.
[56][57][58] By far, most stolen shopping carts that are not returned and left outside their location, however, are misappropriated by occasional subsequent and secondary users without any artistic or cultural-critical readymade intentions as emergency solutions.
Other uses of shopping carts include improvised pieces of furniture (for example, as laundry baskets), or universal nomadic furniture[59] for the household goods of the homeless, or, ignoring the fact that the zinc and plastic coatings of the wire surfaces are harmful to health when heated, as ad hoc barbecue grills.
