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Customers at certain Walmart locations will have to get used to staffed checkout lanes, as more stores are eliminating self-checkout options.
Two stores—one in Missouri and one in Ohio—are hoping to improve customers’ in-store experience by eliminating self-checkout lanes. The grocery giant confirmed that construction in the Cleveland Steelyard location and a St. Louis-area Supercenter will take place after hours and will be finalized in close to two weeks.
Based on feedback from customers, employees and the trend of local shopping patterns, spokesperson Brian Little says the move helps the service provided to shoppers.
“We believe the change will improve the in-store shopping experience and give our associates the chance to provide more personalized and efficient service,” he said.
Researchers also found that self-checkout aisles produce a concept known as “partial shrink,” where inventory is lost because customers do not know how to properly scan and pay for all of the items in their transactions.
Before deciding to remove self-checkout aisles, a number of Walmart stores limited access to self-checkout lanes to users of the company’s Walmart+ or Spark delivery apps. Target changed their policy to a limit of ten or fewer in the self-service lanes, which assisted with making the checkout process twice as fast as when there were no limits.
American-based retailers aren’t the only ones adopting these changes. After a study found retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries with self-checkout lanes and apps sustained a loss rate of approximately 4% – more than double the industry average – Booths, a British supermarket chain, removed self-checkout stations in all but two of its 28 locations.
Source: Black Enterprise
