Wegmans Abandons Self-Checkout

 Useful retail example. 

Wegmans Discontinues Self-Checkout App, Citing Losses

By The New York Times, October 4, 2022

Wegmans has discontinued the self-checkout SCAN app that it rolled out early in the pandemic to offer contactless shopping, citing losses tied to the app.

The supermarket chain, which did not say whether the losses were due to theft or customers simply forgetting to scan items, indicated that improvements would be made to the app.

SCAN allowed customers to scan items while they shopped, then scan a bar code at the self-checkout register to complete their purchase.

Syracuse University's Ray Wimer said employee-monitored self-checkout lanes likely would remain in use, though issues with scales and sensors can cause delays.

However, Wimer said Amazon's system, which uses sensors and cameras to monitor items removed from shelves and placed into a cart, appears to prevent the losses associated with self-checkout apps but is cost-prohibitive for many retailers.

From The New York Times    

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Kroger Rolls Out Belt Driven Self-Checkout Lanes

Will go to see this example of autonomy.

Kroger expanding new belted self-checkout to 20 Tri-State stores

Calls test of new high tech lanes a success  in RetailWire

Kroger says its test of new self scan checkout lanes was a success, and it is now adding them to 20 Cincinnati-area stores.

Kroger new checkout lanes   By: John Matarese    WCPO

CINCINNATI — Kroger says the test of its new high tech self-scan checkout lanes has been so well received by shoppers, it has just expanded them into 20 Cincinnati-area stores.

And it plans to add the new lanes in more stores this fall.    The checkout — if you haven't seen one in your store yet — uses a belt to speed up the process, just like the cashier uses in the standard lane.

This eliminates one of the biggest complaints about standard self-checkout lanes: The lack of space for all your items.   Many people struggle to get their purchases into the bags on the little carousel, sometimes dropping a glass jar.    .... '  

Wal-Mart Tests Exclusively Self-Checkout Store

A reaction by Wal-Mart to getting fewer employees back post-pandemic?  A natural thing to test in new contexts.

Not much detail here:

Walmart is testing a completely self-checkout store  in Retailwire

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

A Walmart Supercenter in Plano, TX, is the site of a pilot program where the retailer is testing the exclusive use of self-checkouts. Store associates are positioned nearby to help customers having any problems checking out. Kroger is also testing a self-checkout concept at one of its stores in Dallas.  .... '

And more

Automated Checkout Growing

Seems that checkout-free experiences will be the future.

Amazon will open checkout-free stores in Chicago and San Francisco

You won't have to visit Seattle to experience automated shopping.

By Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget

You no longer have to make a beeline to Seattle if you want to shop at an Amazon Go store. Amazon has posted job listings for store managers in both Chicago and San Francisco, making it clear where the automated stores are headed next. The company didn't confirm opening dates or locations in a response to the Seattle Times. However, there are already some clues: Curbed noted that Amazon has a building permit for a store in Chicago's Loop, while a San Francisco Chronicle report claimed that a store would open near Union Square. .... " 

An earlier Recode scoop asserted that Amazon would open as many as six more stores in 2018, with one possibly coming to Los Angeles. ....  "

Behavioral Implications of Grab and Go Retailing

Some interesting behavioral observations of early use of the lack of checkouts in Amazon's Grab and Go tests.   We interviewed and watched consumers in our laboratory stores to learn how they felt and reacted to similar approaches.  Will this cause fewer visits, change the nature of visits and purchases?  How will it interact with online visits?    Will this be an ultimate expectation of physical stores?   Amazon is in position to learn much here.

Amazon Go customers are still adjusting to the grab-and-go model in DigitalTrends

Apparently, our parents have taught us well. While Amazon’s new cashless grocery store, Amazon Go, has encouraged folks to just walk out the door without paying, it would seem that folks aren’t quite on board with that model yet. According to Gianna Puerini, vice president of Amazon Go, it has taken shoppers a bit of time to get used to the fact that walking out of a store without stopping by a cash register is not, in fact, immoral or illegal.

At Shoptalk, a retail industry event in Las Vegas, Puerini noted that she has been struck by the number of customers who have second-guessed their ability to take advantage of the cashless convenience offered by Amazon Go. ‘‘What we didn’t necessarily expect was how many people would stop at the end on their first trip or two and ask, ‘Is it really OK if I just leave?’’’ Puerini said of the new-age store that opened in January in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle. .... " 

Competing with Amazon Go

Pointing to other efforts under way, such as Project Kepler.  The tech is there, will it be effectively applied to customers that will use it?

Will other Grocers Beat Amazon Go to the Punch? 

By Matthew Stern in Retailwire  with Expert discussion.

While the U.S. continues to wait for the arrival of Amazon Go, other retailers are entering the cashier-less store space — including Amazon’s biggest emerging e-commerce rival.

Walmart recently began discussing Project Kepler, an initiative headed by the co-founder of Jet.com which, according to Recode, aims to create technology that, like Amazon Go, will eliminate the need for cashiers in-store.

In China, online retailer JD is launching hundreds of cashier-free store locations using technology that appears similar to Amazon Go. A combination of cameras and RFID tracks movement and item selections throughout the store. Facial recognition, also expected to be employed by Amazon Go, identifies customers.

According to the Telegraph, “JD explained that cameras on the ceilings of the stores can recognize customers’ movement and generate heat maps of their activity to monitor customer traffic flow, product selection and customer preferences, which helps store owners to stock efficiently.” .... "

Wharton Podcast on Amazon Go

Will Amazon Go Capture the Holy Grail of Retail?

Amazon’s new cashier-less convenience store aims to answer one of retail’s thorniest challenges: Understanding why shoppers do what they do, and leveraging that knowledge into increasing sales.

Wharton's Barbara Kahn and Emory's Ryan Hamilton discuss the Amazon Go convenience store.

Even before it opened, Amazon Go began drawing deep skepticism over whether it could possibly work. Would Amazon be able to create a convenience store in which shoppers gathered their goods and walked out the door having been automatically charged for their purchases? The technology behind it — like driverless cars — has captured the public’s imagination. A reporter from The New York Times staged a shoplifting heist with a four-pack of vanilla soda around the time the store opened in Seattle last month, and failed. The Amazon Go technology worked, and he got charged for the soda. Others have, though, managed to outsmart the system.

But as shoppers gauge the gee-whiz aspects of the store and convenience of not having to wait in line, Amazon is sharply focused on the shopper. The company is always watching. More than 100 cameras in the 1,800-square-foot store are capturing shoppers’ every move to total up the purchase, but that’s just the start.

Amazon isn’t saying what its plans are for Amazon Go — whether the company will roll out dozens more soon, or exactly how the store serves a greater corporate strategy. But many say that by recording shopper behavior at such a detailed level and being able to analyze it, Amazon is hot on the trail of the Holy Grail of retail: really understanding why shoppers do what they do .... "

Amazon Go not the Future

Some good comparisons of previous approaches.We dabbled in several.

Why Amazon’s Grocery Store May Not Be the Future of Retail

By Nick Harrison, George Faigen, Duncan Brewer  in the HBR

"  ... Amazon Go may face challenges in both respects: It is unclear its eventual savings will justify the investment, or whether customers will find the digital surveillance it entails to be a tolerable price to pay for an improved shopping experience. Our survey of 1,500 British consumers revealed that 19% would consider an app that tracked them an invasion of privacy.  So before adopting any technology, retailers must answer two questions: How does this benefit us? And will consumers like it? Let’s look at how retailers have — or have failed to —  answer these questions. ... " 

Kroger Self Check

Perhaps one of the many pick-up blue order assembly carts, now often clogging the aisles can ring up your order?

Kroger is the next grocery chain hoping to cut checkout lines    It's expanding its self-checkout scanning tech to hundreds of stores.  By Jon Fingas, @jonfingas

t's not just tech giants like Amazon or corporate behemoths like Walmart that are hoping to reduce the need for checkout lines. Kroger is expanding its Scan, Bag, Go self-checkout technology from a handful of stores in the Cincinnati area (which have been testing it for 5 years) to 400 stores in 2018. The system is mostly similar to Walmart's approach: you scan items as you add them to your cart throughout the store, letting you breeze through the self-checkout terminal once you've paid through your goods (in this case, at the terminal itself). It's not certain which stores will receive the tech, but an announcement is expected in early 2018.

It's no secret as to why chains like Kroger are expanding upgraded self-checkout tech after being content to test it in a limited fashion for years. The desire to cut costs (and unfortunately, jobs) helps, but this is also a counter to Amazon's growing presence in the grocery world, especially now that it owns Whole Foods. If established chains don't make it easier to skip the lines, there's a real chance that Amazon will lure those customers away with promises of scrapping lines, checkouts and in some cases the need to enter the store. .... " 

Autonomous Shopping: No Checkouts

So called autonomous, 'checkout-free' experience.     Like that being done with Amazon Go.  Note how other behavioral information can be derived from such interactions.  In Mashable.

 We experimented and provided support to IBM's research work in this area, called BlueEyes, in around 2005.   See tag below.

"  .... A startup is showing how its AI-powered store will change our shopping habits ... A startup called Standard Cognition is experimenting with using machine learning and cameras to create an automated checkout experience.   ... "

See also the demo video at Standard Cognition, which has a more detailed demonstration of the system in action.

(Update) It comes to mind that I have observed my local Kroger getting crowded with workers assembling pickup orders. Could this process be improved by robotics and order interaction with image recognition?  Likely.

Cashier-less in China

Doing some research on the elements and consumer values of the cashier-less store.  Amazon Go getting considerable press this year.   But see also, in Mashable:   China's version of Amazon's cashier-less store is here  " ... The 200 square metre (2,152 square foot) Tao Cafe is the brainchild of Taobao, which is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba ... ".  My own experience in China was that checkout security was more intense than in the US.

Amazon Go and the Problem of Checkout

Remember using this as a scenario at our innovation centers.  What if a shopper could just walk out, setting up a frictionless way to shop?  Does it bring more shoppers in?   In an era when we tested RFID tagging.   What are the technical issues today?

Amazon's automated convenience stores edge closer to public debut
The company has worked out some of Amazon Go's major technical issues.
By Mallory Locklear, @mallorylocklear

Last year, Amazon opened its first convenience store embedded with its "just walk out technology." Located in Seattle, the Amazon Go store, which lets shoppers walk in, load up on the items they want and walk out without having to pay for the items in a checkout line, has been testing its technology with Amazon employees. Now, as Bloomberg reports, the company has worked through some of the hangups with the technology and is making moves towards opening its store and others to the public. ... " 

Google Maps Show Checkout Line Length

Adding line lengths to maps of stores.  Saw a similar approach done at a Kroger, but just for their store.  The data will be crowd sourced, which can lead to incorrect numbers.   With expert discussion:

Has Google solved the problem of long lines at grocery checkouts?   by Matthew Stern

Grocers have tried plenty of tech solutions over the years to shorten the time customers spend in line. But the latest wait-shortening technology is coming not from an individual grocer, but Google’s crowdsourced data.

Google Maps is implementing functionality that uses anonymous crowdsourced location data to let users see estimated wait times at grocery stores, according to Thrillist. Google will roll the technology out before Thanksgiving. The tool for determining the wait at grocery stores is the second of two data-driven crowd size-gauging tools. The first, which launched Tuesday, allows users to determine what the average wait time will be for a table at a given restaurant.

Grocer strategies for limiting customer frustration with lines have taken many forms. Some have tried distraction, installing digital signage to make the time in line pass more quickly. Others, like Hy-Vee, have tried data-driven “traffic lights” that gauge the business of each line and signal each customer to the fastest checkout.  ... " 

Incentivizing Self-Checkout

We supported a number of experiments with self-checkout.  Including ones that included this idea.
Discussion.

How should self-checkout be incentivized?  by Tom Ryan

In the U.K., Asda’s customers, at least in some situations, have to use the self-service checkout lane if their purchases amount to less than £100 ($130).

The revelation came in a Daily Mail article about a customer vowing to boycott the grocer after she was forced to scan 60 items worth over £120 at one of the Walmart-owned chain’s stores.

In the U.S., it has been suggested that retailers could offer a discount for using self-service, similar to incentives often provided by banks and airlines. But having ample terminals and trained personal nearby to handle any problems to support a hassle-free self-checkout experience appears to be the current way to provide some motivation. ..... "

Amazon Go

Has been a while since I have heard much about Amazon Go, which is a very limited test to create no-checkout retail.   This was one of the top of mind approaches discussed in our innovation centers. No doubt this will ultimately become common.  Still lots of details to work out, but it can ultimately be a win. A recent look in e-commerce Times:   Will Amazon Go Reinvent Retail? 

Thinking Associate-less Retail Stores

Human-less stores are now possible — and it might be the end of retail
Are retailers really willing to consider disassociating from associates? ... 
In CWorld, an opinion piece by Evan Schuman Contributing Columnist,  star Influencer  

Good piece by a former correspondent,  starting with Amazon's testing of a checkout free store.  Is that possibly in our future?   Technically very possible, we showed that more than a decade ago. Should the Krogers and Wal-Mart's of the world be worried, or should they now be applying it to reduce their costs?

AmazonGo and the Retail Workforce

While most do not expect Amazon to start building many retail locations, the AmazonGo idea is at least an experiment in the feasibility of near frictionless physical checkout.  Even less friction than online checkout.  So can other major retailers be far behind in doing this?   We experimented with many retail chkecout technologies and consumer reactions.  ReadWrite provides a good overview of retailed issues in the retail work force:

Is Amazon Go a sign of the downfall of a retail workforce?   by Ryan Matthew Pierson

Checkout in the Aisle

Mashable writes:   An old idea, back again.  Have followed it and related tests for years. How relevant will it be in an online world?  Now from Diebold.

Skip: More In Aisle Checkout

One of the holy grails of retail is to much decrease or even eliminate the checkout experience .  It would cut labor needs, and also eliminate one of the most common complaints of shoppers, the long checkout line. We examined a number of methods that used kiosks or checkout devices loaned to the shopper.  But better yet, why couldn't they use their own smart phones to scan items?   Minimizes retailer cost.    At last week's Brandery  event we were pitched another such approach called Skip.  http://GoSkip.com   A partnership with Microsoft and P&G was stated.   " ... A mobile POS integration system giving shoppers the power to scan, pay and skip the line -- all from the convenience of their smartphones ... " .   Ideas were good.  Look forward to seeing a live demo.

Humanizing Self-Checkout

On humanizing the checkout,   " ..... What if supermarket checkout tills could talk? ... Technology has become so advanced that it's a wonder self-service checkouts don't have minds of their own, writes Oliver Pritchett   ... "