Shopping cart

A shopping cart is a usually a wire basket with four self-steering castor wheels of existing reciprocating plate, which is used to transport the goods of customers in supermarkets. Sometimes it is equipped with an infant seat or a baby carrier. The shopping cart was developed to facilitate the customers transport and collection of goods in the market, and can thus be regarded as a further development of the shopping basket. Also as shopping carts are called known as trolleys, which can bring a great relief, especially for elderly people and also are relieving for the support and mobility apparatus.

• 3.1 United States

• 4.1 cars for special customers
• 4.2 cars for specific products
• 4.3 car with special technical equipment
• 4.4 car for special terrain
• 4.5 Virtual "shopping cart" on the Internet

History

For the first time in 1937 Shopping cart used in the United States: Sylvan Goldman stated in his Humpty Dumpty supermarket in Oklahoma City customers with a shopping cart, not least in order to encourage the latter to a larger purchase of goods. In 1940 he reported him for a patent. 1948 saw the first shopping cart in Germany, probably first in Augsburg and Hamburg. These were mobile stands where you could hang two baskets over each other. 1950, then the first models with a fixed basket. Another characteristic of the shopping cart is the large over his wheels, which stabilizes its direction when pushing.

1946 invented Orla E. Watson (Kansas City ), the telescoping shopping cart. These are Shopping Cart, which can be a space-saving slide into each other.

First, without chains were the cars around parking lots or in the landscape. Assistants - often students - collected the car then on again. Later they tried to move as a pledge the customer to even return the car back by withholding an amount of money. Finally, we introduced the coinage system in interaction with the blocking chain. This system, however, in some countries (eg in the USA, South Africa) could not prevail. To avoid that at the collection points to many shopping carts are coupled to each other and affect long Shopping Cart snakes car traffic in the parking lots, were introduced around 2010 in some shopping centers different colored rows of cars. Through various forms of locking tongues only specimens of the same color make another pair, which ensures that the buyer his car couples back in the same row, where he has decoupled it from the shopping.

Shopping Cart in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Usual application

Usually, the customer goes in front of the shopping in the supermarket initially to a shopping cart station where they are deposited pushed together and often provided with locking chains. Are the cars backed up, you put in the slot, which is usually attached to the handle of a car, a coin ( deposit). This allows the blocking chain of the car loose. Now you go with it in the supermarket to buy. You put the desired goods in the car, small items in the upper basket, larger items such as crates or potting soil into the lower compartment.

The complete goods arrived at the checkout placed on the goods transport belt of the / cashier / booked in, laid back and paid behind the cash register in the car.

Then you unload the car - be it in a car in the parking lot or as pedestrians, in the collection - and pushes the car at the collection back to the parked car there snake. Now, if you put the chain of the last car of the car snake in the slot which is attached to the coin box of your own car, you can remove the initially deposited coin deposit back.

Pawn coins

A deposit coin is pushed into a attached to the cart coin lock, whereby the locking chain is released. In modern coin deposit locks of different sizes can be used (from the 50-cent to 2 euro coin ), the user usually has such a matching coin with him and can thus easily borrow a shopping cart. To put any other items in the deposit lock is not useful, since it can be easily damaged thereby.

Employees of supermarkets, which are responsible for the distribution of vehicles, for example, in shopping centers with multiple inputs, use a special key that lets you unlock the deposit lock and you can then pull it out of the slot of the deposit lock again.

Special chips ( chips or even shopping trolley coins called ) with which you can also unlock the deposit lock, are popular promotional gifts. These chips are thinner than the official coins, because after the MedVO it is an offense to manufacture chips with the same diameter and thickness as coins and distribute.

The Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg decided in a judgment of 20 March 2001 (reference 3 U 3914 / 00):

In connection with deposit coins we also saw the letterhead affair.

In Switzerland, usually 1 - or 2- franc pieces used, but there are in rural areas, yet Shopping Cart without deposit system.

Theft and anti-theft systems

One estimate of the Central Association of German Retailers (HDE ) to about 100,000 shopping carts are stolen in Germany per year. Each 20 Shopping Cart is stolen within a year. With prices from 80 to 130 euro per piece of damage to the chains is significant.

Recently, there are anti-theft systems that can block the Shopping Cart when you leave the secured area. A further shifting is no longer, or only with difficulty, possible. The possible trigger points at the entrances and exits are often marked with a red line and signs. In general, two diagonally opposite wheels are equipped with braking devices to. There are different triggering mechanisms:

• In the purely mechanical release of the brakes of a prestressed spring is pressed against the wheel, but retained by a pawl in the released position. A floor-embedded magnets at the outputs pull the pawl toward the ground and thus trigger the blocking of. The blocking can be reset by the staff with a key back, which at the same time the spring is pretensioned again. Due to the short range of the magnetic fields of this system does not fire when the car is lifted above the magnets.

• For systems with electrical activity in the wheel brake, a radio receiver is integrated. Its battery lasts for several years and will be changed in the maintenance of the shopping cart. In order to be secured area is an antenna cable laid underground and connected to a broadcast center. When passing the antenna signal triggers the blocking of the shopping cart. When trying to lift the car over the line blocking is also active. One located on the inner side of the Red Line releases the brake Deblockierschleife automatically when the cart is returned.

• In addition, equipped with a microprocessor system and shoplifting can be prevented. Here, the brake system at the entrance of the supermarket via a radio loop is armed. Registered via another radio link the shopping cart at the checkout that the goods will be paid. Only without this registry blocked the brake when driving over the radio loop at the output. During the process, an alarm is triggered. The supermarket staff can release the brake via a radio remote control.

In a test with radio-controlled locking systems in a supermarket in Cologne the cart thefts from previously 20 to 30 per month, reduced to a single one.

Liability and Insurance Law

When a car collides with a shopping cart, the owner of the store at which the car belongs liable. This applies even if the shopping cart driven by the wind, a car damaged. The store owner must ensure that shopping carts are parked properly secured.

Suppose a customer discharges in the car park the shopping cart and loading the goods into his car one. Now, if roll away the shopping cart there and you will damage another car, the motor vehicle liability insurance the customer pays for the damage. Removes the customer, without waiting for the victim, which is considered hit and run.

Damaged a customer with the shopping cart another car while pushing him to his car, his personal liability insurance will pay for the damage. It is not a case for the motor vehicle liability insurance because the damage does not arise in connection with the use of a car. It was only at the time at which the client's car is opened, the motor vehicle liability insurance comes into play.

However, there may be quite different judgments and practices of insurance companies in other countries than in Germany, because they are always based on national law.

Shopping Cart in other countries

United States

In the United States, where supermarkets usually are more spacious than in Europe, so that even to park the shopping cart is available more space, the spectrum of the special offer is much more extensive than for example in Germany. In addition to trolleys with baby, kids tote cars and miniature shopping carts are there particular spread wagons on which 2 to 3 children can ride. Are usual in all major American supermarkets also rollators, wheelchairs for pushing conventional and electric wheelchairs with shopping basket that can be used by people with walking difficulties. DIY and cheap supermarkets provide instead of the conventional shopping cart with metal baskets often car with plastic baskets available. Even in department stores customers are often shopping cart - especially car with child seat - offered.

The security of shopping carts by deposit locks is uncommon in the United States. Only the Aldi chain there used this backup method. In order to limit the risk of incidents that may arise due to orphan cart in the parking lot, the shopping cart is far more staff employed in particular in large supermarkets than in Germany for handling. For example, the cars will be provided in the entrance areas of people greeters ( German " greeter " ) in the branches of the Wal- Mart chain. Larger supermarkets generally employ special staff to bring the car used from the parking lot back to the entrance areas; in some supermarkets these employees help customers at the loading of the goods into the car.

Number of children Shopping Cars

Wagon with seating for up to 3 children

Electro - cart for disabled customers

Special shapes

Apart from the classic shopping cart with a basket of metal there are many models for special requirements.

Cars for special customers

There are versions that meet the match requirement of children. In children shopping cars the children sit down in a sliding car; about the basket is attached.

In many supermarkets children their own miniature push Shopping Carts. These are usually equipped with a flagpole, so they are not overlooked due to their low height. In some models, a handle on this rod mounted, which allows the sliding of the car which is also an adult.

For disabled people with wheelchair there are easily steerable, coupled with the wheelchair copies.

Shopping cart with baby seat

Miniature shopping carts for children

Children Shopping car (all 4 picture examples were photographed in the U.S.)

Car for special goods

In hardware stores and furniture stores special forms are used for bulky goods. These so-called furniture dolly feature usually only over a flat shelf at base height; also common for beverage crates. In some models, a small item - wire basket is attached to the push handles.

Car with special technical equipment

For use with cash registers, in which the goods can be identified and calculated using attached RFID tags, there's shopping cart with a basket of plastic. The purchased goods may then stay at the checkout in the cart. In this context, a discussion also about the privacy of shoppers formed.

There are also shopping cart with additional features that will make the load carrier for information medium. For cost and acceptability reasons, these models have not yet penetrated the market. One of the new ideas is a so-called speaking shopping cart, which provides information on current benefits and exceptional deals that are just within reach, but can be quite a palaver arise. Displays the Shopping Cart inform discreet and less acoustically disturbing. To appear on the display, for example, information on cucumbers in the produce department, over cakes to the freezer or the current special price for special promotional items. The info - spots are managed centrally and can be updated quickly.

This cart can also be programmed so that they cry out for help if they are stolen.

Car for special terrain

Shopping Cart with special wheels allow for easy and safe carrying of shopping cart on moving sidewalks or escalators. The wheels consist here of a non-rotatable support surface and two larger wheel discs. These are so thin that they sink into the slots of the moving walkway surface and the car so sits on the bearing surfaces. Thus, the Shopping Cart is secure on the escalator and the user has no force to hold him.

Virtual "shopping cart" on the Internet

In market places in the Internet can be found since the 2000s, often called electronic shopping cart, a software that enables customers to cache selected merchandise from a catalog into a list first. The in this shopping cart or basket collected products are billed together at the end. In the discussion of whether it is advisable to allow software patents, the Electronic Shopping Cart is often cited as a negative example. He is registered as a European patent since 1997.

Shopping Cart as an advertising medium

The shopping cart can also be used as an advertising medium. In addition to the classic self-promotion in the handle, there is also the medium of so-called CartBoards. The posters are set in a specially constructed frame to the front side of the shopping trolley.

Important Manufacturer

Worldwide, there are a variety of manufacturers: The company Caddie, based in Schiltigheim / France founded in 1928 and sells Shopping Cart in 130 countries. The company MARSANZ based in Alcalá de Henares ( near Madrid) sold in 80 countries. The Wanzl GmbH, headquartered in Leipheim is currently the world's largest manufacturer of shopping carts. Even in China is now a variety of manufacturers emerged. Large manufacturers in the United States are, inter alia Unarco, the United Steel Wire Company and the Americana Companies Inc.

Reclassifications of the shopping cart

The Berlin artist Stiletto built in 1983 a shopping cart to a seating order. Under the heading Consumer 's Rest Lounge Chair was the work of an icon of the New German designs of the 1980s. But even without creative intentions stolen shopping carts are occasionally used as pieces of furniture, such as a laundry basket.