Ubiquitous Computing and Socially-Aware Consumer- Support Systems in the Augmented Supermarket

This paper considers the possibilities and implications of using ubiquitous computing to augment retail stores with information on critical consumer-driven issues, such as health and food safety, environmental and ethical concerns. The main hypothesis is that the availability of such socially conscious consumer information at point-of-purchase is expected to modulate consumer product choice criteria towards socially responsible consumption and increase their capabilities of negotiation with retailers and producers. This would effect changes in marketing strategies and production processes of retailers and producers towards more socially-conscious practices which still have a sound commercial basis. We oppose the common assumption that such consumer-support systems would benefit only the consumers at the expense of retailers, hence making them non-realistic. To this end we present scenarios and a model for a consumer-support system that supports the interests and value propositions of different actors involved in the retail chain. The relevance of the proposed approach is supported by findings from the sociology of consumption and studies on the influence of consumer opinion forums on marketing strategies of companies. Critical issues for technological realization, such as unobtrusive interfaces and contextualised information presentation for highly-situated interaction are also discussed. Author