Companies do these kinds of things to test the viability of an idea. It is a real world test. There is probably an SVP or VP pushing for all self-checkout stores, and they funded the project enough to spin up prototypes.
It comes down to cost savings. If people are ringing up organic vegetables and ringing everything up as bananas, they’re going to show shrinkage. If people are shoplifting more easily, they will show shrinkage. If people are abandoning full carts in checkout lanes because they are getting frustrated with their inability to use the system without errors, or they get sick of the people in front of them taking too long, they will show increased labor cost and possibly spoilage for zero return. If the number of shoppers goes down because people are frustrated, they will show lower sales. They’ll also have a cost of upgrading the store and ongoing hardware maintenance costs (I would not be surprised if self-checkout gets greater per-customer wear and tear) and software maintenance/update fees. They’ll have to have runners and managers for the “This was supposed to be on sale” customers, and be able to handle the cases where a customer overbought or changed their minds and need things removed from the receipt and run back to the shelves.
All of those negatives will be weighed against the cost savings of firing/not hiring cashiers. If the cost savings is x and the sum of the losses and costs is y, then they will push forward if x > y. They can try putting more loss prevention or smarter software in place, but those are going to increase the costs.
In short, we have reached a unique pivot point in history where Karen can become John Henry.
Companies do these kinds of things to test the viability of an idea. It is a real world test. There is probably an SVP or VP pushing for all self-checkout stores, and they funded the project enough to spin up prototypes.
It comes down to cost savings. If people are ringing up organic vegetables and ringing everything up as bananas, they’re going to show shrinkage. If people are shoplifting more easily, they will show shrinkage. If people are abandoning full carts in checkout lanes because they are getting frustrated with their inability to use the system without errors, or they get sick of the people in front of them taking too long, they will show increased labor cost and possibly spoilage for zero return. If the number of shoppers goes down because people are frustrated, they will show lower sales. They’ll also have a cost of upgrading the store and ongoing hardware maintenance costs (I would not be surprised if self-checkout gets greater per-customer wear and tear) and software maintenance/update fees. They’ll have to have runners and managers for the “This was supposed to be on sale” customers, and be able to handle the cases where a customer overbought or changed their minds and need things removed from the receipt and run back to the shelves.
All of those negatives will be weighed against the cost savings of firing/not hiring cashiers. If the cost savings is x and the sum of the losses and costs is y, then they will push forward if x > y. They can try putting more loss prevention or smarter software in place, but those are going to increase the costs.
In short, we have reached a unique pivot point in history where Karen can become John Henry.