Patent ID: 8145531

Claim:
A method comprising: providing a point of sale station including a lane and a register system, wherein the register system comprises a user interface and a transducer system to read product codes borne by products available for purchase at the point of sale station; providing a shopping cart to carry a plurality of said products along the lane of the point of sale station, wherein the shopping cart has an upper product support unit and a lower product support unit, wherein the lower product support unit is partially obscured from the view of a user positioned at the register system when the shopping cart is in a first operative position adjacent the register system; reading, with the transducer system, a first product code borne by a first product removed from the upper product support unit of the shopping cart; determining, with a computer-implemented analytics module, based on the first product code whether the first product is indicative of a presence of a product complementary to the first product in the lower product support unit of the shopping cart, wherein the determining is executed at least in part by a database access system that queries a database for data associated with the first product code and wherein the data includes one or more parameters indicative of at least a possibility that a complementary product may be contained in the lower product support unit; transmitting to a module of the point of sale station an alert that a complementary product may be contained in the lower product support unit; displaying on the user interface a notification concerning the possibility that a complementary product may be contained in the lower product support unit in response to the alert.