Experimenting With Self-Checkout Options

Disruption is all around us, and the impact on the convenience channel was never more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Honestly, the impact is still being felt nearly two years in. Perhaps, the rising gas prices of late would not have been so jarring if stay-at-home orders in 2020 didn’t drive prices to their lowest in recent history.

Disruption at the checkout is also making its mark on the convenience channel. The global health crisis accelerated the need for change in this area. Other factors driving the move to self-checkout options are rising labor costs and the availability of new technologies.

As recently pointed out by VideoMining, which measures and tracks in-store shopper behavior, retailers have been experimenting with, and are in various stages of, considering or deploying some form of a cashier-free checkout process in their stores. This includes self-checkout kiosks, mobile checkouts, and frictionless checkout using computer vision and machine learning.

The pros and cons to self-checkout are often debated. Whichever side of the issue you stand on, it's not debatable that consumers are looking for any easier shopping experience.