An advertisement system for an airport facility having a plurality of gates connected by passageways and aisles and provided in departure and arrival buildings with restaurants and shops, with information carriers emitting written and picture messages and provided on information boards, and with a plurality of luggage pushcarts for transporting luggage of airport passengers inside the facility, the advertisements system including a plurality of advertisement panels each having a standard advertisement message and at least one different advertisement message stored in the advertisement panels, and elements which arbitrary change the messages so that one of the advertisement messages is displayed at a time.

A shopping cart display system is provided to present product advertisements to consumers who do not have this information. This shopping cart display system includes a cart mounted display that is responsive to unique trigger signals provided by respective transmitters associated with respective fixed locations. When the display receives a unique trigger signal, it displays advertising associated with the respective location. In one embodiment, the display includes a sensor determining whether the information is displayed in the presence of a customer, and a memory for storing all signals received during a given shopping trip and the times that those trigger signals were received. The stored trigger signals may then be used to analyze the path of the shopping cart. The stored data are transmitted to a polling transceiver located at a point of sale register for later analysis. Provision is made for the customer to request and receive information, such as deli numbers.

A system provides a user with proper information about a target exhibition object among many exhibition objects in exhibition facilities according to a user's request. The system has a database system for storing information about exhibition objects, a host computer, and at least one terminal. The host computer has a host transmitter/receiver unit and retrieves information from the database system according to the identification code of a given exhibition object. Each of the exhibition objects has a communication unit that returns an identification code in response to a request signal. The terminal has a terminal transmitter/receiver unit for communicating with the host computer, an operation switch for generating the request signal according to a user's operation, an object communication unit for transmitting the request signal to a target exhibition object and receiving an identification code therefrom, an information output unit for providing the user with information about the target, and a control unit. The control unit transmits the request signal toward a target exhibition object through the object communication unit in response to a user's operation of the operation switch to select a target exhibition object from the exhibition objects, receives an identification code from the target through the object communication unit, transmits the identification code to the host computer through the terminal transmitter/receiver unit, receives information about the target from the host computer through the terminal transmitter/receiver unit, and provides the user with the information through the information output unit. The host computer retrieves the information about the target from the database system according to the identification code and transmits the information to the terminal through the host transmitter/receiver unit.

An electronic shopping-cart handle with a hand bar and a display unit having an informational display screen for a product directory and periodic display of advertisements, the display unit having operating controls operable by a user's thumbs while maintaining a hand grip on the hand bar for displaying select user information on the display screen.

A communication system for a marketing area locates a light signal generating system and a master computer at a control center and delivers message bearing light signals over optical channels to predetermined subdivisions of the marketing area. Message relay units are provided on the shopping carts in the marketing area for transmitting audio and/or visual messages to the shopper. Among the visual messages transmitted are those which visually display a list of items available for purchase and or display in the marketing area, a graphics display of the marketing area and the merchandise display facilities therein, a video picture which is often of a product or item available for purchase in the marketing area and a traveling word message. The relay units disclosed have a computer which operates under the control of the master computer, a signal receiving system and various message signal storage facilities as well as a message transmission system that includes a visual display device and an audio transmission device. Various computer controls are provided for shopper use, including controls that facilitate the recording of items destined for purchase by the shopper and which facilitate the generation of indicia on the graphics display indicative of the item locations in the marketing area and a control that changes the size and viewing mode of the graphics display of the marketing area. Procedures for guiding the shoppers about the marketing area and for delivering the messages to the shoppers in the marketing area are also considered.