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Cameras at the Couche-Tard convenience store at McGill University in Montreal watch customers as they shop, marking where they go, what they look at, and how long it takes them to get in and get out. The store is part of a laboratory, where professors in business and computer engineering study the ways shoppers move, charting the natural flow of a convenience store the way a paddler would chart a set of rapids.
The hope, at least one of them, is to find the pinch points, the hazards and eddies in the stream, from door to cash register, and eliminate them. The assumption inherent in this experiment has been a bedrock principle of the convenience store industry for decades: customers have somewhere better to be. The store is just a stop on the way.
McGill University
McGill University’s Bensadoun School of Retail Management will receive $5 million in funding to drive retail innovation and research, and support the province’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As part of the provincial government’s economic recovery plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its new digital transformation initiative, the funding from the Quebec Ministry of Economy and Innovation will be provided over four years to scale up interdisciplinary research activities, foster retail talent, establish professional development programs, and conduct knowledge transfer for Quebec SMEs.
“We are delighted to receive this vital support, which will enable us to help rebuild and strengthen a key sector of our economy at such a critical time,” said Professor Saibal Ray, Academic Director of the Bensadoun School of Retail Management. “I would like to thank the Government of Quebec for investing to help shape the future of retail and for the
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Alimentation Couche-Tard Opens Lab Store
The venture with McGill University will research and test frictionless checkout technologies.
January 18, 2021
MONTREAL Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., owner of Circle K, has joined forces with McGill University to launch a retail innovation lab at the Bensadoun School of Retail Management to research and test frictionless checkout and virtual reality technologies to transform the customer experience, Couche-Tard announced.
Located on McGill University’s downtown campus, the lab is one of North America s first live, open laboratory stores. It is currently open at reduced hours and for a limited number of customers in store until local public health authorities deem it safe to operate at full capacity, Couche-Tard said.