My mother's Loblaws has Macintosh apples, but mine doesn't. This means, should my current source of Macs dry up, I may be able to find them at another Loblaws, but it isn't a certainty. Since I'm now on tokens, I don't much fancy the idea of running around the city in search of the kind of apples I like.
Why can't I do a search on supermarkets' websites to see which locations have Macintosh apples in stock? Unlike practically every other retailer, supermarkets' websites don't even have the items the chain sells and the prices, to say nothing of individual store stock.
A computerized database of stock must exist because they've used scanning check-outs for decades, so surely they have scanny check-in of inventory as well at this point. Why not just put it online where we can find it?
3 comments:
I'm guessing the point of sale database is inaccurate. It's customary in the United States anyway for a cashier to lump together different produces of the same unit price under one of the several PLU's, and likewise 3 different kinds of hamburgler helper under one of the 3 bar codes, and that doesn't even begin to address the things people do at the self checkout.
So, let's drop bandwidth conservation for a moment and consider simplicity. A webcam trained on your beloved Mackintosh bin (which they probably also already have as a closed-circuit "security" camera) might serve you better than access to their point of sale system.
I was going to conjecture that supermarkets may lack staff to do these tech-type things. Then I remembered the Loblaws companies' extensive websites, including customer forums.
So now I'm thinking they want to downplay internet commerce and bring you into the physical store.
Even if they can't do live inventory or don't want to sell products online, surely they could have a search function that tells you which stores sell which products.
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