Adding An Internet Dimension

Short of opening their doors eight days a week, retailers must have tried every permutation of incentives to maximise their revenue stream and market share. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the supermarket sector where the blend of all-night shopping, self-scan terminals and loyalty card schemes are designed to give one player that critical percentage point lead over another.

The extent to which the success of retailing in general (and of the supermarkets in particular) is dependent on computer technology is greater than might be obvious to the casual shopper. The ubiquitous bar code reader does far more than save shop assistants entering items by hand. It is linked (in theory at least) to the shop's storeroom and purchasing systems, and from there into warehouse and suppliers up the value chain. But customers do not have to give a second thought to how a supermarket check-out system 'remembers' a multi-purchase discount even though the qualifying items did not pass through