Walmart, Costco and other companies are rethinking self-checkout

The backlash against self-checkout lanes is growing, and stores are scaling back their use of the technology after it experienced an explosion in popularity in recent years.

The British supermarket chain Booths announced that it would eliminate self-checkouts in all but two of its 28 stores. In the US, Walmart, Costco, Wegmans and other chains have also revised their self-checkout strategies.

“Our customers have told us over time that the self-scanners in our stores can be slow and unreliable and that they are obviously impersonal,” Booths managing director Nigel Murray told the BBC.

Customers at Booths also frequently indicated which fruit and vegetables they were buying when asked to do so at the self-service checkouts. Buying alcohol at the self-service checkouts was also not a seamless process as staff had to check the age of customers.

“Some customers can’t tell one apple from another, for example,” Murray said. “There’s a lot of fuss, and as soon as you put alcohol in the basket, someone has to come and check that you’re the right age.”

A Booths spokesperson told CNN that having employees check out customers creates a better customer experience.

Problems with self-checkout

Self-service vending machines were first introduced in the 1980s to reduce labor costs by shifting the work of paid employees to unpaid customers.

Self-checkout systems began to spread in supermarkets in the early 2000s as stores sought to cut costs. During the pandemic, many shoppers used self-checkout systems for the first time to minimize close contact with employees and other customers.

But now retailers are considering self-checkout. They’ve found that self-checkout leads to higher losses due to customer error and intentional shoplifting – known as “shrinkage” – than human cashiers checking out customers.

Shrinkage is a growing problem for retailers. He blames shoplifting for the increase and calls for stricter penalties. But retailers’ self-checkout strategies have also contributed to the shrinkage problems.

A study of retailers in the US, UK and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about four percent, more than double the industry average.

Some products have multiple barcodes or barcodes that cannot be scanned properly using self-checkout technology. Products, including fruit and meat, typically need to be weighed and manually entered into the system using a code. Customers may accidentally enter the wrong code. In other cases, shoppers do not hear the “beep” that confirms an item has been scanned correctly.

Other customers take advantage of lax control at self-checkouts and have developed techniques to steal. Common tactics include not scanning an item, swapping a cheaper item (bananas) for a more expensive one (steak), scanning fake barcodes on their wrists, or scanning everything correctly and then leaving the store without paying.

Stores have tried to limit losses by tightening security at self-checkouts, such as installing weight sensors, but additional anti-theft measures also lead to more frustrating errors, such as “unexpected items in the bagging area,” that require staff intervention.

Walmart removed self-checkout lanes from some New Mexico stores earlier this year. ShopRite removed them from a Delaware store after customer complaints. Wegmans last year discontinued a mobile app that allowed customers to scan, bag and pay for groceries while shopping after it reported losses. Costco announced it would hire more staff in self-checkout areas after it discovered non-members were sneaking into self-checkout lanes and using membership cards that didn’t belong to them.

Costco management said inventory losses have increased this year, “which we believe is partly due to the introduction of self-checkout systems.”

Five Below, the discount toy retailer, said shrinkage was higher in stores with more self-checkout lanes. The company plans to increase the number of staffed checkout lanes in new stores.

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