Shopping into the future: Self-service ahead
Nov 04 2009
Retail Wrap >>

Britain experienced a sci-fi milestone of the supermarket kind last month - supermarket chain Tesco opened an Express store in Northhampton with not a cashier in sight. Instead, all five check-outs are manned by self-service computers, allowing customers to scan the barcodes on each item themselves, before paying by card. Just one employee is tasked with overseeing all five check-outs to make sure that there are no snags or misbehaviour, such as kids buying alcohol.

I experienced this do-it-yourself supermarket check-out concept while visiting my sister in Colorado a year ago. We were in a branch of King Soopers, which had some check-outs manned by humans and some by computers. Intrigued, I opted for one of the self-service ones. It struck me as I was scanning my groceries how unaccustomed we South Africans are to being trusted by companies.

"How do they know I haven't deliberately failed to scan a few items?" I thought. "Never in a million years would this work in South Africa."

As it happens, self-service check-outs aren't being considered by South African supermarket groups. They're not even on their radar, although no one's saying it's because we can't be trusted.

"We evaluate new innovations and technological trends that emerge in the global marketplace," said Pick n Pay director Bronwen Rohland. "However we can confirm that implementing a self-check-out system is not on our priority list."

Woolworths said it had "no plans" to go this route, and Spar's Mike Prentice said their cashiers played an important role as the "final touch point with the customer", so removing them is "not even a consideration".

"However, we are paying close attention to RFID (radio-frequency identification ) trials where items are tagged and can be scanned without removing them from the trolley.

Adapted from Source: Wendy Knowler, www.dailynews.co.za, October 2009