Walmart and Target Have a Big Problem They Don't Want to Fix - TheStreet - 0 views
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Retailers and restaurants love to push work off on consumers under the guise that it's somehow better for them. It's like when you order a bagel and a cup of coffee at Panera Bread and you get handled, a blank bagel, frozen butter or cream cheese packets, and an empty coffee cup.
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Letting me customize my coffee in an app as Starbucks (SBUX) - Get Free Report does is customer service. Handing me an empty cup and pointing me toward a carafe with a milk and sugar station is the exact opposite.Self-checkout is the same principle. If Target (TGT) - Get Free Report or Walmart WMT offers a few stations where people in a hurry can opt to check themselves out, that's very different than replacing your cashiers with automated checkout stations. That's not about convenience, it's about saving money.
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And, yes, self-checkout has increased shoplifting, but it has also gone from being a convenience offered to customers to a cost-saving method for stores. It's automating an area where people do a better job in a lot of ways.
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This article discusses the controversial self-checkout model in major chain stores such as Target and Walmart and the cause and effect of labor issues and how other scenarios appear to be encouraging a time when this model replaces human checkout entirely. It was reported that Walmart loses 3 billion every year to customer and employee theft. For the most part, retailers have been thinking about self-checkout through a financial-savings and customer-experience perspective. But inherently, that means there's going to be less eyes on a transaction, less human interaction and more opportunity for shrink.
