If things go as planned for Express Marketplace, Mr. Whipple, the TV grocer, no longer will be admonishing shoppers to stop squeezing the Charmin . . . or the lettuce, or the plums.
In fact, the closest shoppers will get to their purchases before they stack canned goods into their cupboards or cram celery into their
refrigerators will be a color image on their television screens.
Despite warnings that television shopping will never work for foodstuffs, TelAction, a division of J.C. Penney Co., has spent $70 million on its Express Marketplace pilot system to give residents of some cable TV-served North Shore communities direct access to a supermarket through their television sets and telephones.
There are television supermarkets now operating in a few other U.S. communities, but most of them require using a computer or adding a modem or another device. The 4,000 customers in Deerfield, Highwood and Ft. Sheridan who use TelAction need only a tone dial phone.
For people like Roberta Miller, a real estate salesperson and mother, it is a valuable service that is increasingly convenient.
”Don`t get me wrong, I love my Dominick`s,” says Miller, a Deerfield resident. ”I can get anything I need there, but I work when other people want to be out. I don`t know when that will be. This way I can buy groceries when I want. I can pick out some in the morning, turn off the set and finish my list when I come home at night. And the best thing is you can have them delivered when you want them.”
Electronic supermarket
What Miller is talking about is grocery shopping in an electronic supermarket-taking care of their basic grocery business, from making out the shopping list to paying, without ever leaving their homes. There`s no fighting for a parking spot, no playing bumper cars with a loaded cart, no reading the National Enquirer cover to cover while waiting in the checkout line.
”I can turn on the cable channel and pick out some items in the morning, turn off the set and finish my list when I come home at night,” says Miller. TelAction is an outgrowth of Penney`s attempts to give consumers access to catalogue phone systems via computer. Express Marketplace is one store in an electronic ”mall” consisting of about 50 retailers, including Sears, Roebuck & Co., Marshall Field`s, Neiman Marcus, Spiegel`s and J.C. Penney itself. It has expanded into Libertyville, Wauconda and Grayslake and will add another 14,000 homes in Naperville next week.
Physically, the ”grocery” is a food warehouse in Itasca. Its only contacts with customers are through the computerized cable television hook-up and when the groceries are delivered to the door.
How it works
For Miller, it works this way:
Flicking on either her wide-screen television in the living room or a smaller one above the kitchen counter, she finds cable channel 11 and waits for the TelAction logo to fill the screen. By dialing one of the numbers shown on the screen into her tone dial phone, she starts her trip to the store much as if she had put a floppy disk into a home computer and begun a keyboard game. Only this is not a field of blipping Pac Man characters, but a screen full of sliced cantaloupes, beautiful avocados, cuts of red meat and other supermarket goodies.
Using the buttons on her telephone, she controls what appears on the screen. By pressing ”24,” she reaches a display that asks her to select where she wants to shop in Express Marketplace-the grocery, the drug store or the flower/gift shop. Pressing the digit for grocery shopping, she gets another menu of alternatives: Does she want to stroll through the aisles
(arranged as they would be in a real store)? How about reviewing the weekly specials (avocados are 39 cents a pound)? Is there a specific product she is looking for?
As products appear on the screen (complete with size and price information), more button-pushing allows her to designate which items to put into her ”cart.” In reality, of course, the cart is just a piece of computer imagery-an electronic list of items.
”I can take all the time I want. I can turn off the set and come back later and my cart will still be there,” Miller says. Later she can make changes in her order or command that the items be delivered to her home. Prices are competitive with major supermarkets; the delivery charge, no matter what she buys, is always $5.
Miller can pay for her purchases with a personal check (given to the delivery driver or sent electronically from her bank), but why not be totally electronic and use a preregistered credit card? All it takes is pushing a few more buttons on the phone, which, by the way, is charging her only for a local call.
”The delivery is the best part,” she says. ”You can get it the next day or three or four days later and at a certain time of the day, too. How can you beat that?”
Warehouse only
On the other side of the transacation, here`s how it works for Express Marketplace:
Once Miller confirms her food order, the TelAction computer relays it to the Itasca warehouse. Depending on when delivery is scheduled, warehouse workers begin packing groceries, perishables and meat into bags in special containers called totes, says Don Ehly, marketplace manager. (The warehouse is not a retail store. There are no checkouts and no counter displays.)
Perishables like fruits and vegetables are kept refrigerated, and frozen foods stay in the freezer until they are put on the delivery truck. Even then they are packed in special insulated containers, says Ehly. ”Really, the groceries get to the house fresher than if she had them in the back seat of her car.” Meats come in vacuum packaging that will last a week in the refrigerator without freezing.
Ehly`s warehouse has another benefit over the retail store: There is a strict inventory control and almost instant communication with the computer program. For instance, if the warehouse runs out of avocados, a message can be sent to the computer so they no longer will be available for electronic shoppers.
At present there are approximately 8,500 items in the Express Marketplace, less than a third as many as in the contemporary supermarket, but they run a full gamut, with the exception of fresh fish and some deli goods. Most of the brands are reliable national labels that consumers recognize as quality, says Ehly, who explains that by using the service people are trusting Express Marketplace to do their picking for them. After the company gets more firmly established, perhaps it may begin to use some private label merchandise, he says.
The disadvantages
There are some disadvantages to the system, of course. If you enjoy the odor of fresh bread from the bakery or choosing the ripest tomatoes, forget it. If you like reading ingredient lists or nutrition labeling, you can`t.
Also whether the company can keep up with its promises may be in question. Earlier this week TelAction laid off about 25 percent of its employees, most of whom had worked on putting the electronic mall into operation. The layoffs were part of a change from a development company to an operational one, a spokesman says. There will no effect on the Express Marketplace, she says.
”I don`t think Express Marketplace is a replacement for regular stores,” Ehly says. ”There always are going to be people who like to shop in a regular store. But there are people who also like to shop this way. It fits their lifestyle. It`s convenient.”
Confronted by the prospect of dressing two toddlers, packing them into the station wagon and then keeping them on a leash while trying to wheel a cart through supermarket aisles, a contemporary parent may be tempted to just tune in the tube. And certainly bad winter weather might make television shopping attractive to the elderly or handicapped.
”We see this as a pioneering effort that will evolve into a whole new way of shopping in the future,” says Ehly. –
