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For economic purposes many companies such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowes, Sam’s Club, and K-Mart, have expanded the physical size of their stores. This physical expansion has been accompanied by an equally large increase in product variety, especially in the multi-purpose stores. This large selection of products is good for the consumer only if they can conveniently find the item they are looking for. In many cases, particularly for first time customers, this can be very difficult if not all together impossible. This results in either customer frustration and/or a loss of a sale or the customer has to ask an employee on the floor for help. Either way the store will lose money due to customer dissatisfaction or lower employee productivity due to the interruptions.
Our solution to the problem is what we call the Product Locator. The Product Locator is simply a computer terminal located in a Kiosk near the entrance of a store or strategically placed in any number of other departments. The customer would be required to enter a one or two word generic description of the product or use a SKU# and would then receive an output of the product location and a brief description of the product. Next to the terminal there would be maps of the store. The isles would be numbered and further subdivided accordingly. Now all the customer needs to do is reference the map with the location number on the terminal screen and they will know where the product is located.
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