Love Them Or Hate Them, Grocery Self-Scanners Are The Future
from the the-choice-of-a-new-generation dept
This weekend, I was mentioning to a friend that I used a "self-scanner" to check myself out for the first time last week (at Home Depot). The process was pretty simple, and I could see how people would like it. My friend wondered how they prevent theft, and I just assumed they had some method for doing so. Like magic, here's an article talking about how successful these scanners have been and how many more stores are investing in them. Some people hate them - saying they break down too often, are confusing, or don't have any sort of "personal touch". Others, though, like that the self-checkout usually gets them out faster (though, that might just be a perception issue - since the customer is more involved in the checkout process). As for the "theft" issue, apparently many of the systems track the weight of items you're carrying against what you actually checkout. Of course, if you never put an item down on the conveyor belt, then I don't see how such a system prevents any theft.
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Self-Scanning
There was a recent story about how Kmart, who had piloted these last year, had reported that the stores using them experienced higher levels of shrink (industry parlance for shoplifting).
Customers are going to fall into some ratio of honest-to-dishonest based on the nature of the business and the target demographics, and merchants who don't build in appropriately-tailored securtity steps are not going to realize the expected benefits.
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Re: Self-Scanning
Yeah, I was actually wondering if the amount of shrink was normally less than the amount the store would save on extra checkout people (and the additional cost of the scanner). If so, I could see a company making the decision that it was "worthwhile".
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Re: Self-Scanning
I used one of these at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. There was an employee sitting at a little "booth" in the midst of the self-checkout stands in order to help customers, but I'm sure he was also there to keep an eye on potential abuse of the system. It would seem like maintaining one real employee for every half dozen or so of the self checkout stands would help a lot.
msykes
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Re: Self-Scanning
I asked the lady, who was riding heard over a group of these units at a local store, if people try to scam the things. She said "It can't happen." !!??
If that's the attitude you know it must be happening.
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I wonder why anybody would use these things - you pay the same amount of money and get less service, and the stores saves money at your expense. It's bad for labor, it kills jobs. I say stay away from them
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