1. An electronic personal shopping system for use in a retail facility, the system comprising: a portable machine-readable personal memory store including a plurality of non-volatile data storage areas, the data storage areas partitioned to define a first portion containing customer specific demographic profile information, the personal memory store further partitioned to define a second portion containing information identifying a customer's transaction history and at least a third portion for storing a current incentive indicia, wherein the transaction history includes information on each item most recently purchased by the customer; at least a point-of-sale terminal, the terminal including; a personal memory store interface unit capable of reading, writing and editing said demographic profile, transaction history and incentive indicia information of a personal memory store; an output device capable of outputting said demographic profile, transaction history and incentive indicia information; a microprocessor based control unit, coupled between the interface unit and the output device, the control unit managing information transfer and data processing under application software program control, the control unit including transaction circuitry for editing and updating transaction history data to reflect a customer's most recent transactions and for editing and updating current incentive indicia data to reflect a customer's most recent transactions, the transaction circuitry further for determining whether a particular customer's most recent transactions qualify that customer for an incentive award; and wherein, the updated transaction history data and updated current incentive indicia data processed by the transaction circuitry are written to the second and third data storage area portions of the personal memory store by the interface unit, thereby maintaining the transaction history and incentive indicia data stored in the data storage areas in an up-to-date condition reflecting the customer's most recent transactions.