There has been debate on SDMB about whether these abominations are in fact abominations.
What I’m asking now, however, is whether they’ve been a success in the market. From my observations,
A. They are not on the increase in stores.
B. Some stores use them; some not at all. Which leads me to believe that some stores are purposely not using them, that is, rejecting them, to differentiate themselves from those that do.
C. In those stores that do use them, the customers do not.
Any intelligence on the present or future success of theme, um, abominations?
I love 'em, and wish my area had some (Santa Cruz). I don’t know about whether they are worth it, although I imagine they are probably cheaper in the long run than cashiers. My prediction is that they will be in use in all states except New Jersey in the next ten years.
I worked for the headquarters of major supermarket chain here in the Boston area and we did view them as a success. Some customers loved them and it only took one cashier to look over four or six of them. The customers that did not like them could, you know, go to the regular checkout.
I question your premises that people don’t like them and that stores are not rolling them out. I love them. My wife and friends like them and I have seen studies that younger people like college students take to them like ducks to water when they are installed.
I know of three stores in our area that have installed them recently. One is Home Depot and the other two are grocery stores. I believe that the chain I worked for is still rolling them out to stores as long as the store customers tend to fit a certain demographic (young and educated).
One thing that I am not sure of is the cost benefits to the store. One factor would be the raw cash outlaw. Self-Checkout machines cost tens of thousands of dollars with a full bank of them costings well over a hundred thousand dollars all things considered. On the other hand, the hardware for a single, typical checkout lane can cost $30,000 or more. The cash register alone generally starts at $20K+ and goes up from there. I don not know the costs for the very latest hardware. However, there is also image, convienece, and marketing to consider. A store may benefit from appearing techologically superior to its competitors. Certain market segments respond to this. Also, checkout times for those machines tend to be fast for small purchases. Certain people (like me) way that very heavily when deciding which store to shop in.
I used to use them in my local Publix for small purchases until they started having to come over and check my credit card and signature. Now there is no time saving to me, so I don’t bother any more. That seems to have slowed down their use here (purely anecdotal).
Ok, here is an actual cite that blows your premise out of the water:
Dated April 7, 2004
IHL, a consulting group that advises retailers on new technology, has estimated that 95 percent of American supermarkets will have self-checkout to some degree by 2006.
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“It’s an absolute necessity, as supermarkets face pressure from Wal-Mart,” said Greg Buzek, president of IHL. “It allows them to shift employees to higher-profit areas of the store.”
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More than half of all supermarket customers buy fewer than a dozen items, and they are much more likely to patronize a store where they can get in and out in a matter of minutes. New York City, for its own peculiar reasons, has been last in line. Because self-checkout machines are expensive, nearly $100,000 for the typical four-lane configuration, they make sense only in large stores, which are the exception rather than the rule in the city.
I dunno about whether they’ve slowed down, Home Depot recently got them here too. I wonder if they’re really useful much beyond grocery stores, though.
The grocery stores here are still using them and they’re quite popular, but KMarts near me took them out, is that what you’re looking for?
Again, purely anecdotely. The grocery store next to where my parents used to live didn’t have self service lines, it had self-service shopping carts. Every cart had a scanner and you scanned as you shopped. You just swiped your card as you left. No queuing at all
It doesn’t blow it out of the water, though it is evidence against it. After all, what you provided is one person’s prognostications, not hard numbers about what stores are ordering now. But appreciated.
On the opinion side, I personally don’t see the benefit of the machine for a large supermarket order. I don’t relish scanning each item myself and having to accept responsibility for mistakes: that is, if I scan it to my disadvantage, then I could get screwed without any recourse (no, I really bought only one pack of razor blades, honest!), whereas if I scan it to my advantage, I could get accused of trying to screw the store (you missed a pack of razor blades–that’s shoplifting!).
The only advantage for such a large order is if only the self-serve lines are open. But then I blame the store for not having more cashiers to begin with. I have basically quit going to the local Jewel, as they are trying to shove this scheme down my throat. Not for my benefit, but for theirs.
Young and educated people like these things? I’m 33 and have a master in science degree. I guess twenty-something PhDs are the target, then.
Its hard to tell exactly. By definition, we can’t know how many successful shoplifters go through those lines. However, the machines themselves are very sophisticated. You have to scan an item and then place it in the bag which is on a scale. If the weight of the item does not match the database or an item is placed in without being scanned, a warning message is given to the customer and/or the cashier is notified electronically. In addition, the cashier has detailed security cameras that monitor and record each machine at all times. There is much more technical security on the machines than there are at regular checkout lines. In the regular checkout lines, cashiers make money-losing mistakes like forgetting to scan items all the time. That is largely prevented on these machines.
I find it hard to believe that any store would do that (with today’s technology, at least). I mean, what’s to stop someone from dropping a few “freebies” into their cart without scanning them? Do they have employees standing at the doors to compare the receipts with the contents of the carts? Or does it just work on the honor system? Knowing human nature, I can’t help but believe that theft must be rampant at that store.
I have never heard of anyone using them for large orders. All of the ones that I have seen and worked on were simply additional express lanes for “12 items or fewer” or something close to that. Small orders make up a large percentage of sales (50% or more in some stores) so this is not trivial. That is what they are designed for. Old-fashioned cashiers will still take care of the rest.
That study that I referenced was only one of a huge volume of information on the net that all say roughly the same thing. That was only a small clip of one article that talks about the trend. I was just being concise with the information.
Why would a grocery store (Winn-Dixie) order the equipment for two lanes of self-checkout, and then have the both of them closed most of the time, while there are live cashiers at (only) two of the eight other full-service lanes, and a dozen or more customers lined up? Maybe this is fodder for another thread, but it sure is a curious thing.
I don’t see the advantage of having a self-checkout lane when there has to be a cashier standing at the register by the door to take care of your transaction. That’s not self-checkout, it’s self-scan and bag - a process that would take less time if the cashier was actually doing it.
Publix, on the other hand, has newer equipment that will let you do the whole thing, and let you pay by credit or debit card, give you cash back, and be on your way without having to interact with a human. Except that there has to be a human there to take care of the inevitable screw-ups, which happen with alarming regularity. I think some bugs need to be worked out of the system before it becomes something that everyone wants to use.
All of the self-service machines going in around here are obviously of the newer variety. I tend to buy only simple things and I have never once have had to interact with the cashier at all. However, it is a supermarket and produce presents a problem for these things. As long as there is loose produce, there has to be a cashier with a camera there to key in the codes. Otherwise, the customer would have to go through a list of 100 types and might just decide to choose the cheapest one. You could put barcodes or microchips on the tomatoes, but I don’t think that would go over too well. I believe that as people learn how they work, and will tend to self-select if they have a lot of specialty items and go to the regular checkout. Then again, this is the regular public we are talking about, say they may just clog up the machines for days at a time.
It’s pretty easy to shop lift with them. I have been using them for years and accidently got things for cheaper or free 3 times (that I know of, probably more that I don’t).
In one case, something small and light got stuck to a large item and I didn’t notice it when I put them in the bags. It would be impossible or very hard to do with a larger item, but with a very light item, it would be pretty easy to slip it in.
Two of the times the computer messed up and gave the wrong price per pound for bulk items. It charged me for 1 cent for 5 or 6 bananas.
But since employees steal more than customers, maybe in getting rid of some of their employees, they are actually cutting down on theft.
Holy crap. 20k?!? Could you give an approximate breakdown of the hardware as well as their costs? 20k seems ludicrously high to me. From what I can tell a checkout lane basically consists of a table, a computer, a monitor, a weight sensor, a bar code sensor, a conveyor belt, and a money drawer. Those are all off the shelf parts. I suspect I could cobble together an ugly albeit workable system for a few thousand at most. The only thing i’d be missing would be software. Theres no way it’d cost 15 grand to get a programmer to create a simply workable interface.
How long would your “ugly albeit workable” system survive in the real world? If you want a reliable and maintainable system, it is going to cost real money. Your estimate of software costs is way, way off. The software required to run the registers in a grocery store is much more complicated than you think.
The supermarket I used to go to would just let you punch in the number on the sticker that is on every piece of fruit, there was a scale built in to the scanner part. It worked fine for everything I purchesed. There was also a way to look up fruits and vegtables on the touch screen that did not seem to hard.
It definatly takes some time to get used to using these systems and I would hate to get stuck behind someone using it for the first time. Once you get the hang of using it I think they are great for small and medium orders.
Unfortunatly the store in my neighborhood is one of the few that does not have them, there are a lot of older people in my neighborhood which I am sure is the reason.
