App for aisles

Say you’re at a Walgreens, shopping for dental floss. But where, oh where is the toothcare aisle? You could ask. Or you could look up and read the large, hanging signs that tell you exactly where to go. But why bother straining your neck like that? Enter Aisle411. An app that’ll allow you to bring up the floor plan of any Walgreens and search for a specific product.

And what’s in it for Walgreens–other than a store full of customers running into each other because they are too busy looking at their smartphones while they wander? According to Bloomberg:

Retailers are trying to improve the experience of shopping in their stores to fend off lower-cost rivals on the Web. If shoppers at Walgreens use the Aisle411 app instead of, say, Amazon.com’s bar code scanner, which lets users do price comparisons, the pharmacy could prevent its stores from becoming showrooms for items that are cheaper online.