Shopping Cart - History

History

One of the first shopping carts was introduced on June 4, 1937, the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain in Oklahoma City (another shopping-cart innovator was Orla Watson). One night, in 1936, Goldman sat in his office wondering how customers might move more groceries. He found a wooden folding chair and put a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs. Goldman and one of his employees, Fred Young, a mechanic, began tinkering. Their first shopping cart was a metal frame that held two wire baskets. Since they were inspired by the folding chair, Goldman called his carts "folding basket carriers". Another mechanic, Arthur Kosted, developed a method to mass produce the carts by inventing an assembly line capable of forming and welding the wire. The cart was awarded patent number 2,196,914 on April 9, 1940 (Filing date: March 14, 1938), titled, "Folding Basket Carriage for Self-Service Stores". They advertised the invention as part of a new “No Basket Carrying Plan."

The invention did not catch on immediately. Men found them effeminate; women found them suggestive of a baby carriage. "I've pushed my last baby buggy," an offended woman informed Goldman. After hiring several male and female models to push his new invention around his store and demonstrate their utility, as well as greeters to explain their use, shopping carts became extremely popular and Goldman became a multimillionaire. Goldman continued to make modifications to his original design, and the basket size of the shopping cart increased as stores realized that their customers purchased more as its size increased. Today, most big-box stores and supermarkets have shopping carts for the convenience of the shoppers.

Past studies determined that retailers who did not offer shopping carts such as Sears suffered slower sales in comparison with retailers who did use shopping carts. Subsequent to the introduction of shopping trolleys and centralised checkout lines at Sears shops, the company noticed an increase in sales.

In 2004 the British supermarket chain Tesco trialled shopping trolleys with built in resistance (adjustable from 1 to 10), pulse monitoring and calorie counting hardware in an effort to raise awareness of health issues. This introduction of the trolleys coincided with Tesco's sponsorship of the cancer awareness Race for Life.

Recently researchers developed prototypes of computerised context aware shopping cart by attaching a Tablet computer to an ordinary cart Initial field trials showed that the prototype and its context-awareness provide an opportunity for enhancing and affecting the shopping experience.

While the basic design of shopping carts has changed very little since their creation in the 1930s, Target's new cart, made of recycled plastic, is an evolutionary step forward. The cart has won design awards for its improved casters, interchangeable plastic parts to simplify repairs and handles that allow a user to more easily maneuver it around the retail area.