CSE498, Collaborative Design, Spring 2022
Computer Science and Engineering
Michigan State University

Meijer is a family-owned business founded in 1934 that has pioneered the one-stop shopping experience. With over 240 shopping centers operating in the Midwest, Meijer provides a wide array of products from household items to pharmaceuticals.

Grocery shopping is a task that takes organization and planning. Adding an item to a shopping list requires resources like time, memory and a list itself. Often, shoppers think of an item they need but don’t have those resources readily available. Moreover, shoppers can be unsure of what Meijer coupons, called mPerks, apply to the items on their list, or if that item is available at their local Meijer.

Our Meijer Smart Shopper enables customers to use Alexa to interact with the Meijer application, simplifying the shopping experience. A shopper can interact with our application using their phone’s microphone or an Alexa-enabled device.

In a verbal interaction with Alexa, a shopper can add or remove items from their Meijer shopping cart and list. Our application recognizes shopper patterns to improve Alexa’s accuracy when determining what brand of item a shopper wants. Alexa uses these preferences to alert the shopper when their favorite items are on sale. Additionally, Alexa informs the shopper when an added item is unavailable at their local Meijer and suggests an alternative.

Meijer Smart Shopper modernizes Meijer’s pioneered one-stop shopping experience. Shoppers can now be confident they are utilizing every available mPerk and that their shopping list is complete.

Meijer Smart Shopper is a website, iOS and Android application. The website uses React and is written using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The iOS application is written in Swift and the Android application in Kotlin. Our back end is hosted using Microsoft Azure and is written using Python.