There were two stories over the weekend about self-checkout that are worth referencing.
• First Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen has a piece about the self-checkout system at clothing retailer Uniqlo. Here’s how he framed the piece:
Every so often a technological breakthrough comes along that makes you feel like you’ve teleported to the future: the iPhone, ChatGPT, self-driving cars.
And self-checkout at Uniqlo.
Really! One of the craziest things you can do these days is buy socks. Just walk into a bricks-and-mortar store, pull clothes off the shelf and drop them in a bin.
What happens next will seem like magic.
I recently had this experience at the Uniqlo flagship on Fifth Avenue in New York, a three-level store packed with holiday shoppers. On the top floor were two options. To the right was the service counter. To the left was self-checkout. I went left.
I picked one of the dozen self-checkout machines, followed the instructions on the screen and placed my clothing in the box. The machine did the rest of the work. I confirmed the number of scanned items, tapped to pay and grabbed my receipt. And that was it. The whole thing took 30 seconds. The escalator ride downstairs took 40 seconds.
Cohen writes that “at most stores, the self-checkout line has the appeal of wet socks. But this one has become so popular that it’s used by 70% of Uniqlo’s customers, including 90% in some markets. It sounds dystopian, but it’s actually delightful. People love it so much they forget how much they hate self-checkout.
“So what’s the magic behind this brain-melting automated process? As it turns out, it’s surprisingly primitive tech. The self-checkout machines use radio frequency identification readers to automatically detect RFID chips hidden in the price tags of Uniqlo’s products.
“Those invisible chips have become indispensable to a company that sells a billion pieces of clothing a year in thousands of stores around the world.”
The secret sauce behind this self-checkout system, Cohen writes, is that it eliminates the friction inherent in traditional self-checkout systems:
“The frustrating thing about classic self-checkout is that it simply transfers the workload of paid employees to unpaid shoppers. It changes who’s doing the labor, but it doesn’t change the labor that has to be done.”
The Uniqlo system essentially eliminates the labor altogether.
The other story is from the Associated Press, which reports that at many stores, self-checkout is facing a “reckoning,” as “some retailers are adding restrictions, while others are pulling out completely.”
From the AP story:
This past fall, Walmart removed self-checkout kiosks in three stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico as part of a location by location approach, but on the whole it is adding more than it is taking away. To reduce wait times, Target is now limiting the number of items to 10 that shoppers can scan in an handful of stores nationwide.
British supermarket chain Booths has been getting rid of its self-checkout at the majority of its stores for the past 18 months in reaction to customer backlash. A year ago, grocery chain Wegmans, citing “losses,” discontinued its self-checkout app that lets shoppers scan and bag items while they shop. However, it continues to offer self-checkout registers at its stores.
Self-checkout, first tested in supermarkets in the late 1980s, gained momentum 20 years ago. But grocers ramped it up even more three years ago to address the pandemic-induced severe labor shortages.
At stores where self-checkout continues to be an option, it is being employed as a way of dealing with labor shortages. But at least part of the downside is the theft that some executives say is an inevitable result of having fewer staffers at the front end.
KC’s View:
I’m fascinated by the momentum that anti-self-checkout stories have gotten in recent months. As someone who uses these systems all the time – I’m one of those shoppers who prefers self-checkout, largely because it empowers me and satisfies my need for autonomy – I’m not aware that the experience has been degraded in the recent past.
However, I would concede that with few exceptions, the experience hasn’t really improved, either. Self-checkout may be several decades old, but in many ways it is the experience now as it was all those years ago. The technology may have been improved, but the customer experience is largely the same. I do think that shoppers have a right to expect more, and it is possible that the momentum of the anti-self-checkout stories is being fueled to some degree by the lack of innovation at the front end.
There are exceptions, of course. I have not seen the new Uniqlo system, but it certainly sounds like an advance. And as MNB readers know, I’m an enormous fan of checkout-free stores such as Amazon Go – I firmly believe that there will come a time when this kind of technology is as ubiquitous as scanning.
There may be limitations to what retailers can do. Labor shortages cannot just be willed away, and they can’t just snap their fingers and invent new, more frictionless systems.
I wonder if there is something larger at work here. I wonder if retailers that have emphasized efficiency over effectiveness are now seeing the inevitable result of those priorities. Is it possible that the limitations and frictions of existing self-checkout systems are exacerbating the limitations and frictions elsewhere in the store?
When I went to the new Wegmans on Astor Place in Manhattan, self-checkouts dominated the front end – but because the rest of the store was brimming with energy, food-forward, and customer-focused, it all seemed to work organically – not just operationally, but philosophically.
The post Two Views Of Self-Checkout appeared first on MNB.
View Original Article
