Notes

1. Introduction
1.1. Problem definition
Every day, there are lots of people visiting grocery stores to shop for their necessities like food, drinks, household products, etc. According to The American Time Use Survey, the average time each shopper spends on grocery shopping every day is 41 minutes. Why would we spend so much time on grocery shopping?
When we walk into the grocery stores with our buying list, we spend most of our time not searching for the products we want, but comparing between different brands by looking at the information on their product labels, carefully calculating which one has a better quality and a cheaper price. For Hong Kong citizens living in this busy city, time is money. We all want to get rid of the pain of spending lots of time standing in front of the shelf while being a smart customer and make the best purchase. In order to relieve the situation, developing a mobile application, named as Smart, can help the busy citizens to choose their products among different brands at anytime and anywhere. And eventually, the time spent on grocery shopping can be shortened as the users can make their decision before they go shopping.

1.2. Problem significance
Nowadays, food safety is our concern since there are so many food problems discovered in the recent years especially in Hong Kong, China and nearby countries. For instances, the meat supplier in China, Shanghai Husi, supplied expired meat to the fast-food giants including McDonald's, KFC and Burger King (Mok & Ng, 2014). Besides, the Taiwanese supplier of edible oil, Chang Guann, also offers gutter oil to the restaurants and bakeries in Hong Kong (
(“Taiwan gutter”, 2014). Regarding to these news, the information of ingredients, origins and related companies of the products are becoming more and more important for the customers. To ensure food safety, people would like to understand the products in a more detailed way, and therefore, they spend extra time in reading and doing comparisons between different brands of items.
Moreover, product information are vital to those people who demand for special requirements on their meals. Especially for those who are dieting, they would prefer to consume low calorie products, while for the people who are suffering from food allergies, they would avoid eating the food that contain the allergens whic are harmful to them. As a result, they need to spend additional time in reading and analyzing nutrition values, origins or ingredients from the labels on the products. While they are making comparisons, it requires much of their time to remember and compare those information printed on products.
Furthermore, product information are also important to the poor families and the housewives. Owing to the selling price differences between products in different shops, some consumers, especially the poor families and the housewives, would walk around all the nearby stores to search for products with lower prices to obtain the most economical purchase and to save money. As a matter of fact, even though they can save money from this way, the whole process is not economical in terms of time cost.
From the above situations, it is undeniable that the problem of spending too much time in grocery shopping cannot be ignored. Developing an online food review platform which aims to help the users to make their correct decisions and buy smarter is necessary.

1.3. Project objectives
In order, we have to investigate the customers’ behaviors by studying those factors that influence the customers’ choices significantly.
Firstly, online reviews affect customers’ buying decisions. According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 90% of the respondents agreed that their buying decisions are affected by the positive online reviews, and 86% of them admitted that their buying decisions are influenced by negative online reviews (). From the result of the survey, it is undeniable that online reviews can affect the customer’s decision. Therefore, if there is a system which can display the online reviews from the public, the users can take references to the reviews and identify which brand of products are worth buying.
Secondly, product prices also determine customers’ buying decisions.
To shorten the time for consumers to make decisions on which products to buy
When the users are given some brands of products, the users can check the system for the differences and similarities between the selected products so that the decision time for their purchases can be reduced as the time for memorizations and comparisons on product information is saved.
To help the users to plan for their healthy diets
In the system, nutrition information of the products will be displayed for each product. When the users bookmark several products, the system can identify the items which possess the highest or lowest nutrient values such as energy values, fat or carbohydrates content. Therefore, people can plan for their meals carefully before they buy the products from the stores.
To identify products that contains allergens
There are some people who are suffering from food allergies. When they consumes products that contains the allergens mistakenly, allergic responses like swollen eyes, hives on skins, wheezing and vomiting may appear. In order to avoid them from eating the food that contains the allergens, the system can filter out the items that contains the ingredients which can induce allergy effects.
To identify the location of stores which sell products with the lowest prices
As some consumers would like to obtain the cheapest product from the stores, the system will record and analyze the prices and locations of the products submitted by the users. It helps the consumers to achieve the goal of saving money without visiting each store for making the price comparisons.
1.4. Motivation
In recent years, the use of mobile applications has penetrated to our daily lives deeply as we rely on them for several different purposes in our mobile devices. We use mobile devices to assist the flow of our daily activities especially for the purposes of communications, entertainments and transactions.

1.5. Project scope
Collect items’ information through crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining contents or ideas from a large group of people including the volunteers and part-time workers. Because of its effectiveness in collecting a huge amount of information from the individuals all around the world, the idea of crowdsouring can be applied on the system so that the users of the system can search for as much as information as they can. In the system, the users can submit the detailed product information to the application which will then be stored in the database. The information includes brand name, product name, nutrition information (energy values of carbohydrates, proteins, sugars, total fat, cholesterols, etc.), ingredients, origins and volumes or weights. They can also upload photos of the products so that it would be easier for the viewers to identify the specific items on the system.
Browse for product information
The system can display the available items obtained by crowdsourcing either all at the once or according to the products’ categories and subcategories. When the viewers select a specific item, its item information, including brand name, product name, nutrition information, ingredients, origins and volume or weight, will be displayed.
Comment, like and share items to relatives and friends
What the users can also provide for each item are their comments and likes. With regards to the comments and likes of a specific item, the users can find out whether the item is worth buying or not. Also, the system will use the plugin from social applications like Facebook and Twitter, so that the products can be shared to the social networks and spread over the entire community.
Search for the desired items
The users can perform simple searching or advanced searching on the items stored in the system by inputting the brand name, product name, ingredients (included and excluded in the product), origins, volume or weight. The search result page can display the matched items according to users’ searching preferences. 
Identify differences between selected products
The system provides the function of ‘My Favourite’ so that the users can temporarily bookmark their items. They can choose to compare and contrast for the selected products’ prices, nutrient values, ingredients, origins and volume or weight. As a result, the users do not have to spend extra time in identifying the differences and memorizing the products’ information when they need to consider which items to purchase.
Provide updated products’ prices and location
The users can update the prices of products available in the system supplemented with the geographic location of the places they are located in. This allows other users to take reference to the prices and consider where to buy the products accordingly in order to save money from the purchase.
Display system’s popular products
The system can analyze the number of likes that are given to each product. The most popular products will be displayed in the home page of the application to give product recommendation for the viewers.
2. Literature review
2.1. Major alternatives of the problem
There are some existing websites for the consumers to browse and search for useful information about products available in stores, yet they are not detailed and well-organized enough. Take an example from the website of PARKnSHOP (http://www.parknshop.com/), a supermarket from Hong Kong, the users can only use it find out the item’s brand name, product name, weight and price from the webpage. In fact, when the consumers are making decisions on which products to buy, they would also consider many other types of factors, such as nutrition values, ingredients, origins and comments from the public. However, these products’ information can only be found on the product labels or from the discussion forums instead of the supermarket website. Therefore, if there is a mobile application which can locate the information at anytime and anywhere, it would be more convenient for the consumers to make quick choices and have better shopping experiences. Take another example on CalorieKing’s website (http://www.calorieking.com/foods/), although the nutrient values of products are clearly shown, the information is not well-organized enough. There are no product information comparisons and contrasts on nutrition values, ingredients, origins and prices. The users have to compare the products one by one by themselves. Hence, developing a system for displaying detailed and well-organized product information would be a potential topic.


2.2 Current status and limitation



3. Preliminary design, solution, and system