In the middle of the Depression, Sylvan Goldman, an Oklahoma grocer, acquired several Humpty Dumpty stores (a bankrupt chain of retail grocers in the South) and tried to make them profitable. His 1934 acquisition didn’t originally look to have been a wise decision — the economy was shot, and although it’s true that even in bad times people have to eat, what they choose to buy is influenced by the economic climate. During downturns, folks gravitate towards cheaper, more basic foodstuffs that have smaller markups built into the price. Lowered markups can mean the difference between an outlet’s thriving or failing, because the profit margin in the grocery business is razor-thin. Even a busy grocery store can be losing money if the markup on what it is selling is too small to cover the expenses of running the business. Goldman’s chain was in trouble. He studied his shoppers, looking for clues in their actions that would help him restore profitability to his enterprise. He began to notice they generally terminated their activity when their hand-carried baskets became uncomfortably heavy and would then head for the checker rather than start a new basket. This observation led to his 1936 instructions to employee Fred Young to affix an undercarriage (made from a folding chair with wheels added to it) to pairs of metal, over-the-arm baskets. If weight were taken out of the equation, would customers buy more? Would they shop longer? The answer was a resounding no — folks preferred to stick with what they knew rather than play around with an unusual-looking contraption, and customers continued to use the heavy arm-borne baskets to carry all their goods to the checkers. Goldman did not give up — he hired decoy shoppers to wheel the new carts through the store, so providing a visual demonstration of what this innovation could do. He also stationed someone at the front door to greet patrons and offer them carts as they entered. The strategy paid off. Folks began using the wheeled baskets, and they quickly established a lasting preference for them. Shopping carts became an ordinary part of the shopping experience in other retail outlets. The shopping cart thus rolled its way into marketing history. Upon his death in 1984, Goldman left behind an estate worth more than $400 million, a lot of it earned thanks to a wheeled folding chair affixed to the underside of two baskets. The invention of a once-struggling businessman revolutionized the shopping experience in terms of how shoppers make their purchasing decisions. The average shopper, pushing a cart, goes into a store with a list, but also leisurely perambulates down aisles and past displays, filling the cart not only with intended buys but also impulse items whose displays or prices strike his fancy. The maneuverability and ease of shopping with a cart freed the consumer to roam the length of the store, thus putting him in the way of retail temptation that the heavy arm-borne basket cocooned him from.
The shopping cart was not a resounding success when first introduced.