They are putting in meters where I live that you can pay with by credit card.
I don’t think that being a customer REQUIRES you to be a jerk and assume that you shouldn’t lift a finger. I don’t think that it is REQUIRED to for a customer to return the cart to where it was picked up. I just think that it is a friendly thing to do. The store provides a service, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help them out or be nice to them. In the long run, it is probably reflected in the prices, but that isn’t the primary reason I do it, either.
Perhaps the difference is where I live now, people don’t abandon carts in the middle of the lot nor do they mind returning them to the store; and store employees don’t mind collecting carts and returning them themselves. It’s simply not an issue or a problem.
We also don’t have beggars hanging out at the doors, scam artists cruising the parking lots looking for victims, “pregnant” ladies with booster boxes sauntering down the aisles, people stealing carts for their kids to play in, and robbers holding up the store every Tuesday, although I know there are places where this is common. Not here, and that is one reason I’m here, too.
Fine. We’ll set up the devices on the carts to take credit cards too. If you don’t return the cart, you get a charge. Hows $10 on your card, sound? Plus we’ll know who had the cart last if someone complains their car was struck by it. Great idea, gazpacho!
I doubt that the few lost minimum-wage jobs really has a noticable impact. Or are they ‘lost’ at all, with the self-service system simply accomodating a greater number of sales at peak times than would be possible in the physical space available with regular checkouts? In any case, there’s other places where supermarkets are rapidly increasing their workforce, especially with online order deliveries.
Sainsbury’s near me has a big bank of handheld self-scan terminals, and a little holster on every trolley. I’ve never used them - in fact I don’t shop there normally.
The Aldis where I live are considerably smaller than the full-service supermarkets, and their parking lots are considerably smaller, as well. I don’t have to walk more than about 6 parking spaces to get back to the store and drop off my cart.
Were the Aldis the same size as a full-service store, with the same size parking lot, I’ll bet a lot more customers would say “screw the quarter, I’m in a hurry” and just leave the cart where it is.
How do you get dents? What the hell kind of cars are you all driving where an empty shopping cart is going to dent your car? Maybe – maybe – some light scratches in the clear coat (not through the paint), but that’s it. I run into random crap all the time – notably when backing into the garage – and it takes quite a collision to even scar the clear coat.
I don’t like to get hit by shopping carts or hit them – I still have an illogical sense of paranoia – but nothing ever really happens. Even when I try to intentionally damage neighboring-vehicle doors with my door, it’s near impossible to do.
As I said before, I almost always return my cart to the store or corral. In fact, I frequently take a loose cart in from the parking, use it for my shopping, and then return it to its proper place. So I’m definitely on the plus side of the cart ledger. Which is why I don’t like stores that assume that I along with every other customer is a “lazy slug” who will only return a cart if he’s got a quarter at stake. It’s insulting to me for them to think they have to modify my behavior and it’s insulting to me for them to think twenty five cents is sufficient incentive to modify my behavior - they’re calling me irresponsible and cheap to boot.
I’ve seen carts get blown clear across the lot just from the wind. I’ve come out and had a cart up against my back door panel and a dent half the size of my fist. A friend of ours had a long, ugly scratch mark from a cart that rolled past her car. This is not just minor damage, and it seriously pisses people off.
You’re all thinking of a Large American City scenario here; I’m thinking of Small/Medium Australian Town. I worked in Supermarkets for a while, and there’s something you’re failing to take into account here: The supermarkets wouldn’t lower their prices. They’d keep them the same and pocket the difference, knowing there’s nothing you could do about it. Even if they did lower the prices, it would only be by a few cents per item, and would make no appreciable difference to the bottom line on your docket at the end of the day.
Having said that, Australia is somewhat hindered by the fact there are really only two major supermarkets (Woolworths and Coles), with a few IGAs (who are very expensive) and a couple of Aldi stores (who close earlier than everyone else too), so there isn’t a lot of competition…
There are more than a couple of Aldi stores. 150 at the moment, forecast for 200 by the end of next year. They already have more than 6% market share on the East coast. And everywhere they open up local Woolworths and Coles start cutting prices.
There’s a Woolies or Coles in almost every shopping centre. 200 Aldi stores for all of Australia really isn’t that many.
FWIW, they opened an Aldi near the supermarket I used to work in. Our reaction? Nothing. The prices didn’t change and it didn’t affect our sales one bit. Aldi catered to a different type of customer and wasn’t regarded as a threat, IIRC.
Probably the most relevant economic principle is the aspect of perfectly competitive markets where, when technology enables something to be done cheaper, firm A either adopts that technology and lowers prices or one of the other competing firms adopts the technology and undercuts firm A’s prices. It is the same principle as if firm A realizes it can offer product X more cheaply by buying in bulk, or installing more energy efficient freezers, or any other cost-saving measure.
This is straight out of economics 101, I’m not out on any kind of a limb to make this argument. I am making the assumption that the self-checkout is truly less expensive for the store, and that the grocery market is reasonably close to perfect competition. Both of those probably vary somewhat by circumstances. The cost savings will be greatest where wages are high, and the market may not be competitive in a small, isolated town.
Cost savings from technological advances are not passed on to consumers in non-competitive markets. For example, when a good is considered unique (say, the iPhone) and there is only one supplier and no perfect substitute, the firm will be able to keep as profit the cost savings from improved technology.
Anything you personally are seeing regarding number of grocery stores probably has more to do with your local demographics than anything else.
Bloom, which is a chain (?) that is new to NW South Carolina, has this. But I don’t shop there very often so I never bothered to learn how to do it.
When they work, that is. I’ll bring in a cart from the parking lot if there’s one nearby my car. One store I use has wheel-locking carts. A lot of the carts I’ve found in the lot have locked wheels.
I’m all for tech solutions as long as they don’t cause more problems than they solve.
The ultimate question is whether the cost (including customer dissatisfaction) of any of these systems is less than the cost of stolen carts. The stores think so. Whatever.
Here is a cite which states, in part, that there were 288,000 grocery stores in 1954, almost 100,000 fewer than in 1948, and by 1972 the number had dropped to 194,000. The university of Minnesota estimated the number in 2004 as being 85,000. .
While finding these data I found similar data for Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Australia. If you assume my local demographics are the planet Earth you’re probably right.
The fact is that the only economic advantage to the self scan machines is to the store, and maybe not even to them. According to what I’ve read, a study in Britain showed that 2,000,000 British shoppers had used the self scan line to pilfer merchandise, and according to another report self scan users spend 40% less on magazines, gum, and other high profit margin impulse items.
The benefit to the supermarket is in perceived convenience to the customer, and none of this will result in lower grocery prices.
I think it might be a €2 (US$3) coin they use here to get people to leave trolleys back.
Then your car is made of sterner stuff than mine is. I’ve suffered all manner of dents in parking lots.
Parking lots are seldom perfectly flat. They slope a bit, allowing carts to roll on their own and get that nice momentum going. Fast-ish metal cart + non-moving metal car=dent.
Robin
So you’re boasting about commiting vandalism? 
The Home plus stores here, along with a number of other retailers have carts that require a 100 Won (about 10 cents) coin to be inserted to release them from the stall. I’ve never seen the abandoned in the parking areas. Come to think of it, I can’t recall any stores here that don’t use the coin insert method.