Shopping cart

A shopping cart (also called a buggy) is a cart supplied by a shop, especially a supermarket, for use by customers inside the shop for transport of merchandise to the check-out, and, after paying, often also to the car on the parking lot. Often customers are supplied the convenience of taking a cart in or near the shop and returning it on the car park, and personnel are charged with moving carts from the latter to the former. Sometimes the customer has to pay a small deposit by inserting a coin, which is returned if and when the customer returns the cart at a designated cart parking point.

Often there is the problem of theft of shopping carts; for example, shopping carts are often used by urban homeless people to carry their belongings. One of the solutions is a system of sensors around the parking lot which block a wheel. Sometimes shopping carts are physically prevented from even leaving the shop, but that is mainly a solution if few customers come by car.

An alternative for the shopping cart is a shopping basket. A customer can often choose between a cart and a basket, and may prefer a basket if the amount of merchandise is small; small shops may only supply baskets.

See also: moving sidewalk

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Using the term metaphorically, an e-shopping cart (electronic shopping cart) is software which allows customers shopping on a website to accept product orders for multiple products from the website. This software automatically calculates and totals orders for customers and indicates the total price including post and packing.

Some setup must be done in the HTML code of the website, and the shopping cart software must be installed on the server which hosts the site or on the secure server[?] which accepts sensitive ordering information.

See also: electronic commerce