The point is cost savings for the supermarket. That's it. Some customer prefer them, but usually that is the effect of deliberately understaffing the remaining cash registers, or the customer being completely unable or unwilling to interact with strangers.
Supermarkets are now grudgingly admitting that self checkout systems cause a significant increase in loss due to theft, but that it is still cheaper than hiring actual staff for the registers.
In the Netherlands the current state of affairs in supermarkets with self checkout registers is that theft is on the up. People justify 'forgetting to scan an item' by the (perceived or actual) greed shown by supermarkets in terms of shrinkflation and the rising cost-of-living. Supermarkets did really well during the Covid-years, but customers didn't benefit from that in the slightest.
An additional problem is that the staff attending the self checkout registers are often young (because it is a position which would waste the skills of the more experienced employees), and they get bullied and berated by customers pissed off for getting selected for random (either actual or directed by the staff watching the cameras) checks.
I wonder how much theft would be mitigated if you implemented a quasi-random “free item” feature - tune it so there’s a chance the last item you scanned rings up free. Tune it to be a 2-5% discount at most, similar to coupons. Make the customer feel they won something.
That sounds like how Star Market does things: everything is overpriced by a dollar compared to normal grocery stores (which unfortunately are a thirty minute drive from me), but they have rotating “sales” that are $1.00 off. I absolutely hate the store, because they aren’t fooling me, just overcharging me and then claiming I “saved” money.
I think this is how all Alberstons-owned stores work, because I’ve seen it an Randall’s and other places, but until now could avoid shopping there. I always wondered why Walmart said “everyday low prices”, because isn’t that normal? Well, apparently not.
The worst example of that I know of is Kohl's - everything there is insanely overpriced, but there is almost always a combination of sales, coupons, and sacrificial goats that gets you to normal or below normal pricing.
Walmart (and Costco, and Trader Joe's, and a few others) are so large that instead of making you dance around with coupons and such, they just tell the company to give them a discount and pass it on to the customer. An item at another store that needs a store app, coupon, etc, will just be dropped the same price at Walmart I've noticed.
(I hate the Kohl's style, as even when I stack coupons and get to 75% off on clearance, I still feel I missed something and got cheated. But apparently lots of shoppers really love that kind of "bargain hunt".)
It depends how the self-checkout is executed. In our one supermarket here in Germany (Globus) each customer gets a mobile scanner unit and you scan each item as you go through the store and put it in your cart. This has multiple advantages:
You only have to touch each item once, not three times. You always know the accurate total price – no more counting in your head. And the actual checkout process is just the payment (plus the occasional random spot check), so there's almost never any lines. All in all makes for a much quicker and more relaxed shopping experience.
Unfortunately I don't know any numbers re theft, but it's still running 5 years later. Of course being in a suburban area helps.
Supermarkets are now grudgingly admitting that self checkout systems cause a significant increase in loss due to theft, but that it is still cheaper than hiring actual staff for the registers.
In the Netherlands the current state of affairs in supermarkets with self checkout registers is that theft is on the up. People justify 'forgetting to scan an item' by the (perceived or actual) greed shown by supermarkets in terms of shrinkflation and the rising cost-of-living. Supermarkets did really well during the Covid-years, but customers didn't benefit from that in the slightest.
An additional problem is that the staff attending the self checkout registers are often young (because it is a position which would waste the skills of the more experienced employees), and they get bullied and berated by customers pissed off for getting selected for random (either actual or directed by the staff watching the cameras) checks.