Love It or Hate It, Self-Checkout Is Here to Stay
The advantages of self-checkout are clear: customers can avoid long lines by scanning their own items, workers are freed from that task themselves and retailers can save on labor costs.
However, there are also disadvantages: customers complaining about mysterious error codes, workers having to monitor both humans and machines, and retailers dealing with theft.
In 2021, 30% of transactions were done by self-checkout, almost double from 2018, according to a survey by FMI, an industry group. And 96% of retailers surveyed offer self-checkout.
However, some retailers are adding restrictions to the technology, while others are pulling out completely.
To reduce wait times, Target is now limiting the number of items to 10 that shoppers can scan in some stores.
And British supermarket chain Booths has been removing self-checkout at its stores for the past 18 months in reaction to customer complaints.
Self-checkout, first tested in supermarkets in the late 1980s, gained momentum 20 years ago. But it increased even more three years ago because of labor shortages during the pandemic.
Christopher Andrews, an associate professor at Drew University says that retailers are now seeing the downside of self-checkout and theft is a big issue.
Andrews said a technology that relies on shoppers to do their own scanning tempts even law-abiding citizens to be dishonest. Shoppers could also make honest mistakes, leading to losses for stores.
However, some retailers have been adding cameras or sensors at kiosks to monitor shoppers.
Kroger, for example, now uses artificial intelligence at its stores that alerts shoppers when something is wrong. If a particular item isn't scanned successfully, the system prompts the customer to self-correct. And if customers can't fix the issue, a light above the self-checkout blinks to attract workers' attention.
And plenty of people love self-checkout.
Ellen Wulfhorst, 65, said using self-checkout brings back childhood memories of a toy register.
"There's something childish and fun about it," Wulfhorst said. "I get a big kick out of sliding the product across the reader, and it goes beep. There's a certain satisfaction to it."