Aside from the food retailers that have adopted self-checkouts to a limited but growing degree, UK retailers have been muted in voicing convincing business cases within other retail sectors.
Indeed, when Retail Week came to write about self-service technology at the end of last year, the focus of the piece ended up being what US retailers were doing and tips for their UK counterparts to take away if they ever wanted to get self-service off the ground in a big way (Retail Week, November 30).
Now, we hear from our friends at Planet Retail that Boots has begun to install self-checkouts from NCR in a “number of its larger and busier stores”. IDC’s forecast appears to have some legs.
No doubt other retailers will be hot-footing it down to their nearest high street to try and catch Boots’ self-checkouts in action. Of special interest will be how easy it is for customers to use their Advantage loyalty cards and any rules or processes that Boots puts in place to back up its profit protection strategy.
However, any Boots customer who has been stood in a queue on a Saturday afternoon would probably have to admit that any technology that can speed things up has got to be a good thing.
Yet not all news in the world of self-service technology this week is so positive. Tesco’s US Fresh & Easy stores, which have introduced the totally self-checkout concept, do not appear to have been a massive hit with customers. The company is halting its store roll-out for three months while it reviews the performance of the fledgling business.
Clearly, some customers will always appreciate a little personal service and maybe even the classic American service industry sign-off of “Have a nice day”.
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