Curated News
By: NewsRamp Editorial Staff
January 08, 2026
Retail's Blind Spot: How Smart Carts Reveal the Hidden Shopper Journey
TLDR
- A2Z Cust2Mate's smart cart technology gives retailers a competitive edge by revealing real-time shopper behavior to optimize layouts and promotions.
- Smart carts capture continuous in-aisle data through consent-based engagement, transforming transaction records into detailed insights on shopper decisions and movements.
- This technology enhances shopping experiences by reducing friction and personalizing offers, making retail more responsive and customer-centric for better daily interactions.
- Smart carts turn shopping trips into interactive journeys, offering real-time totals and recommendations while bypassing checkout lines for a seamless experience.
Impact - Why it Matters
This news matters because it addresses a fundamental flaw in how physical retail understands its customers. For decades, retailers have relied on point-of-sale data, which only tells them what was bought, not why or how. This lack of insight into the in-store decision-making process—the moments of hesitation, comparison, and discovery—has left retailers guessing about customer needs, often leading to inefficient store layouts, irrelevant promotions, and a stagnant shopping experience. The rise of e-commerce, with its rich behavioral analytics, has only widened this gap, putting brick-and-mortar stores at a competitive disadvantage. Smart cart technology, as proposed, offers a potential solution to this existential challenge. For consumers, it could mean a more personalized, convenient, and engaging shopping trip. For retailers, it provides the critical data needed to compete effectively, optimize operations, and truly build experiences around the customer, not just transactions. In an era where customer experience is the ultimate differentiator, closing this insight gap is not just an operational upgrade; it's essential for the survival and relevance of physical retail spaces.
Summary
In a compelling critique of modern retail analytics, A2Z Cust2Mate Solutions Corp. (NASDAQ: AZ) Chief Marketing Officer Yaniv Zukerman argues that retailers have developed a dangerous blind spot. While companies excel at tracking transactional data like purchases, pricing, and inventory, they have steadily lost visibility into how shoppers actually behave inside the store. Zukerman contends that most existing systems capture only the end results of a shopping trip, leaving the entire in-aisle journey—the decisions, hesitations, and trade-offs—largely invisible. This creates a significant disconnect between how well retailers believe they understand their customers and the reality of the shopper experience, a gap that hinders true customer-centric innovation.
To bridge this divide, Zukerman champions smart cart technology as a transformative solution. By turning the shopping cart into a continuous, consent-based engagement platform, this technology can close the gap between guessing and real shopper insight. Smart carts capture real-time basket activity, show running totals, and deliver relevant offers during the trip itself. This reduces friction for shoppers while providing retailers with an unprecedented, clear view of customer movement and decision-making at scale. This newfound visibility enables retailers to design store layouts, promotions, and experiences based on actual, observed shopper behavior rather than relying solely on aggregated transaction data analyzed after the fact.
The news release, available on www.newmediawire.com, details how A2Z Cust2Mate's flagship smart cart solutions are designed to transform brick-and-mortar retail. These AI-driven carts personalize the in-store journey, offering seamless in-cart scanning and payment to bypass traditional checkout lines. They deliver real-time customized offers and product recommendations, aiming to turn routine shopping trips into engaging, rewarding experiences. For retailers, the technology promises to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty while streamlining operations and optimizing merchandising through rich, data-driven insights. The company emphasizes that its modular, detachable panels can retrofit legacy shopping cart fleets, turning them into intelligent platforms that deliver a comprehensive range of benefits for both shoppers and store operators.
Source Statement
This curated news summary relied on content disributed by NewMediaWire. Read the original source here, Retail's Blind Spot: How Smart Carts Reveal the Hidden Shopper Journey
