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Tech Beat: New ways to shop on the horizon
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Shopping will get even easier and even more high tech in the near future. Exactly how that will happen is demonstrated center stage at the National Retail Federation's Annual Big Show, from new ways to search and pay for merchandise, all the way to name badges.
Motorola has designed name badges for store clerks which are designed to improve your shopping experience.
"When a customer asks you a question like, 'How much could this possibly be?' All I have to do is take my Smart Badge, because it also has the barcode reader, scan the barcode and give the customer the price," Frank Riso of Motorola said.
The show has always been great at showing us the future of vending machines--vending machines with videos, vending machines with video games, vending machines with great audio.
Intel has worked on a few you might run in to. This Costa Coffee machine will send out coffee and bakery-type smells to help make you feel like you're inside an actual coffee shop.
Another one, by McCormick, is a game visitors play at the company's headquarters in Baltimore.
"It actually sends out smell that are spices, common spices, and you get to select the games," Christopher O'Malley of Intel said. "If you get four of four correct, you get a 25 percent discount. If you get two out of four, you might get a 10 percent discount, but the intent is to expand your pallet of spices."
Finally, if you frequently use PayPal when shopping online, it's now easier to use that system off-line, int the real world. Thanks to an agreement with NCR, which makes checkout payment devices, you'll be able to checkout more places using PayPal.
"We're now deployed in 18,000 stores across the U.S., and this is going to grow dramatically in 2013 in supermarkets, quick service restaurants, in convenience stores," Patrick Gauthier of PayPal said.
PayPal also announced a program with certain Jamba Juices that allows you to place and pay for your order via a mobile phone, then have your drink waiting for you when you walk into the store.