Report • 18.06.2009

Self-Service Solutions: No more Checkout Queues

How can checkout waiting times be reduced whilst also saving staff at this crucial point in the store? The manufacturers of self-service machines promise the perfect solution: “self scanning” and “self paying”. Here, customers scan their items themselves and pay at automatic tellers. The manufacturers contend that users will participate in this process gladly if they can benefit from it: shorter waiting times and better control of scanned prices. Nevertheless, experiences within retail stores show that it is best not to change completely to self-service counters, but rather offer both systems to allow the customer to decide.

Before the last EuroCIS, the Cologne-based European Retail Institute (EH) published a checkout study. According to this work, there is a gradually growing trend towards self-service solutions, despite the fact that the current use of such systems is, at least in Germany, largely reserved to experimentation. The EHI emphasises that the use of self service scanners does take longer than the procedure at a staffed checkout. Nevertheless, the decisive advantage is the ‘subjectively shorter waiting time’, the authors write.
 

Various Procedures

Concerning self-service solutions, stores can choose from a wide range of varieties. Given that the technology is often launched in the USA or Great Britain, a series of English terms has been established:

• Customers scan items in their shopping basket using mobile devices and pay at the checkout or at a pay machine.
• Items are scanned by checkout staff, the customer pays in cash or with a card at a pay machine.
• The customers scan items at a self-service checkout and pay there or at another pay machine. ‘Scan and bag’ systems are also possible, where the customers pack the items into bags themselves at the scan station. A 'scan and pass' or 'belted solution' involves the customers placing the items onto a belt and packing them into bags after they pass through a chute. ‘Scan and pay’, on the other hand, refers to the combination of a scan and pay station.

Practical Examples

By mid 2009, IKEA Germany aims to have replaced half of its 1400 checkouts with self-scanning machines to provide customers with a fast shop option. The machines will only accept cards, not cash. According to branch information, around 70% of IKEA Germany’s customers pay by card. The average within the German retail sector is not even half this figure. IKEA aims to allocate checkout staff to monitor the self-service zones, which will also be observed by cameras.

In almost all Metro Cash+Carry branches, customers who wish to pay by card do so at separate pay machines, supplied by IT provider Höft & Wessel from Hanover. Customers who pay in cash are required to go to a separate cash desk. As a result of such measures, the checkout assistant is replaced by an item and obligatory customer card scanner.

Edeka tradesman Jörg Hieber has already introduced self-scanning stations in four stores in South Baden. In an interview with Lebensmittel Magazine, Hieber stated that in October 2008, approximately 20 percent of customers used self-scanning facilities. Hieber estimates that around 13 percent of the company's sales are made this way. “The most surprising thing is that it spans all generations. There are people who are interested in the technology of it all, who enjoy the process". Nevertheless, he admits that he himself would prefer to be served at a checkout. He also states that no costs are saved through the self-service technology. Although full-time checkout assistants obviously scan quicker, Hieber believes: “Sensible customers go to normal checkouts when they have many items in their trolleys and use the self-service scanners when they are just buying bits and bobs”. The companies responsible for supplying the technology are IBN (scanning and paying machines), Awek (checkout software), Gunnebo (cash recycling) and the IT workshops in Lahr (fingerprints for card payers, even at staffed checkouts).

Mobile Terminals for Customer Use

Numerous European retail companies are currently testing mobile hand-scanners for use by registered customers, such as Leclerc and Casino in France and Sainsbury’s in Great Britain. Höft & Wessel has also entered this market, and will launch its small Skeye Dart hand terminal at this year’s EuroCIS.

In the future, mobile phones with cameras could even be used as mobile scanners, whilst simultaneously functioning as personal shopping assistants to list product ingredients or recommend additional items. Metro is already testing this system in its Future Store. Nevertheless, the small display could pose limits in the use of this device. This could be remedied through the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) with large display screens. However, the use of camera mobile phones would mean that the photography ban currently applicable in several stores would be impossible to maintain. Customers would not only take photos of the barcodes, but probably also of everyday happenings inside the store – which could then quickly appear on the Internet.
 

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