You know when you’re at the supermarket and the candy bars are usually located at the checkout counter? It’s there for a reason, it’s meant to tempt shoppers waiting in line to make that impulsive purchase, but if you’ve ever managed to resist the urge to purchase it, good on you.
However, if you do your shopping at ShopRite, it might be harder to resist the urge. This is because Mars Wrigley has developed a robot together with a company called Savioke called Smiley. This is a robot that contains various candies and chocolates made by the company that will make its way around the store.
It will also be able to detect when customers are near the robot and are reaching for it, in which i will then pause to allow customers to take candy from it. This means that if you’re hoping to avoid temptation, it might be a lot harder now. However, in addition to pushing candy, the Smiley robot will also be used to gather information about shoppers, like collecting data on shopper interactions and how shoppers move about the store.
Right now, the Smiley robot is being tested at ShopRight in Monroe, NY and presumably if successful, it will be rolled out to more stores.