A few weeks ago, an announcement by Booths (the north west of England supermarket chain) sparked a lot of media interest and column inches. They had decided to remove self-checkouts from all bar two of their stores. Was this the beginning of the end for this technological development? 

The media coverage was considerable, if a little confused. As ever the tendency to polarise an issue meant many missed the fact that Booths are keeping self-checkouts in a couple of stores. Instead the focus was on the removal not the retention – though to be fair, it was a larger number going, than staying. The attention was also perhaps symbolic of Booth’s running opposite to most announcements on self-service checkouts. 

Booths felt the self-checkouts weren’t producing the returns they wanted and that consumers preferred people in their stores. This has some merit and some people clearly hate self-checkouts. But they were keeping them in some situations; the decision probably focusing around volume, throughflow, basket size etc.  

That’s always been my point about self-checkouts; they work for some people in some situations, but not all and views do vary. Some consumers love them; others hate them. The reasons for views vary for social, economic, technological, demographic and simply personal preference reasons.  

If you want one item to buy in a hurry, then joining a staffed checkout queue is a pain. Where staffing is an issue or customer flow is very high, they can work well. In other situations some consumers want to speak to people or they feel the service provided is valuable for social or other reasons. Some commentators see this as a vital community function. 

As with so many things, the use of technology needs to be a balance and it depends on the circumstance and the user.  

What was more odd perhaps was, a week or so later, Marks and Spencer blaming middle class shoplifters who were using their self-checkouts (supported by a criminology academic). Marks and Spencer described it as a social phenomenon and a global problem. If it is that much of an issue for them then they could rethink their approach to their introduction of course. As I have written before, self-checkouts in Marks and Spencer seem highly problematic, necessitating human interaction due to confusing layouts, signage, complicated transactions and so on. There are also more fundamental issues. They control this and so ‘blaming’ their customers is a bit much in my view.   

I will finish this post on another academic note. I recently came across a paper (Nusrat and Huang 2024) which considered self- and regular checkout impacts on consumer loyalty. Using a mix of study approaches they considered self-checkouts in grocery retailing in the United States. They concluded:  

“self-checkout systems, despite their advantages in terms of speed, ease of use, and cost reduction, can result in lower customer loyalty compared to regular checkout systems, especially when the number of purchased items is relatively high.” (p9) 

There are confounding factors and mediators at play here and the context and consumer attributes have a role. In other words, the situation is important, and what a retailer is trying to achieve is a key driver. Booths, often seen as up-market, may be right that good, trained people providing a service is a key part of the brand for their customers. Or is the case that eventually we get used to such things as with “customer service hotlines” which are nothing of the sort?

I doubt self-checkouts are for the scrapheap everywhere – and the physical evidence suggests the opposite – but a more rounded view of their appropriate use may be welcome. 

Reference 

Nusrat F and Y Huang (2027) Feeling rewarded and entitled to be served: Understanding the influence of self- versus regular checkout on customer loyalty. Journal of Business Research, 170, 114293. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323006525