Morrisons has announced that it will add a Shop-to-Light feature to its product finder in the coming weeks. Customers will then be able to use the Morrisons Now app to make the electronic shelf label of an item they are looking for flash. Around 200 supermarkets already have Vusion’s technology in place. Vusion’s client Walmart in the US has also recently begun rolling out a shop by light product finder. The Retail Optimiser reported.
The product finder first guides the customer to the correct aisle. There, the user can activate the LED on the label to identify the exact position of the item on the shelf. Morrisons plans to offer the feature in all 497 supermarkets following the full roll-out of electronic labels next year.
Vusion is equipping the entire network of 497 Morrisons supermarkets with a total of 10.8 million electronic shelf labels. Morrisons began the roll-out at the start of this year. The Morrisons Daily convenience store banner operation is not currently included in the scope of the ESL roll-out.
Morrisons already uses lighting for online order pickers
Staff are already using the labels’ LEDs to pick online orders more quickly. The system assigns a colour to each order picker and causes the label of the item they are looking for to light up accordingly. According to Morrisons, the company is also integrating orders placed via aggregators and Amazon into this feature.
The new customer-facing application complements the existing Product Finder in the Morrisons Now app. This utilises Google BigQuery and Gemini 1.5 Pro to link search terms with product codes, as well as stock and location data from the relevant store. According to Google, the tool processed around 50,000 queries per day during the recent Easter trading period.
Vusion is digitising the 497 Morrisons supermarkets
Vusion’s labels are replacing the previous paper labels at Morrisons and transmit prices and product information centrally to the shelf location. Offers for users of the Morrisons More loyalty card also appear directly on the displays. In addition, the retailer is integrating the technology with its shelf cameras and the applications used for picking online orders. The project also includes an upgrade of the Wi-Fi infrastructure in the stores.
