Every time a Spaniard steps into a supermarket, he or she spends an average of 32 minutes in the establishment, a very valuable time if we take into account the few free hours left after the work day. And as the paleoanthropologist Juan Luis Arsuaga said in a phrase for posterity: “Life cannot be about working all week and going to the supermarket on Saturday.” Perhaps that is why people want to make the trip to the supermarket as quick as possible, something that is achieved by avoiding rush hour and the endless queues at the time of payment. That is precisely what, in theory, is promised to be achieved with self-checkouts, the terminals that are increasingly present in more shops (not just food stores) and large stores. The intention is to automate the payment process so that it is the customer who makes the purchase who performs a function until now attributed to the checkout staff, charging for the products and putting them in bags. Implemented for several years in many points of sale, the growth of this form of payment is continuous. A system still under construction that is not exempt from criticism among those who continue to seek personalized or even more human and close treatment. More information «The integration of new technologies in physical stores, such as the particular case of self-checkouts, cannot be understood in isolation, but within a global process of digital transformation,» says María José Sanzo Pérez, professor of Marketing and Market Research at the University of Oviedo. This transformation affects everything, including customers' consumption habits. However, a study published by the Bank of Spain in 2023 concluded that last year 65% of the population used cash on a daily basis, and for 60% it continued to be the main or most common means of payment for making purchases in physical stores in Spain. However, age is a relevant factor: cash is the most common means of payment for 76% of those over 65 years of age, but only 36% of young people between 25 and 34 years of age use it for most of their purchases. Self-checkouts often accept cash, but users who do not pay by card are unlikely to use these terminals, which can be more complex to use than going through a traditional checkout. In this regard, Manuel Zaplana Llinares, Social Director of Branding and Retail, highlights a challenge for companies that introduce self-checkout: “The acculturation of certain consumer segments towards this form of payment. They already experienced this in the banking sector when they tried to make customers more self-sufficient by using ATMs, and while many users have seen it as a more agile way of carrying out their transactions, for others it has been a barrier.” And he recalls that in physical stores “a large part of the consumer experience and, therefore, of loyalty, falls on the people who serve them, so the implementation of self-checkout carries a risk of losing loyalty from a certain segment of customers.”
Self-checkouts put personal contact at risk, which can harm the loyalty of some customers.Grace Cary (Getty Images)Self-checkouts are not new. Countries such as the United States or China have been betting on them for years, even with stores where only these terminals exist, without the presence of staff. The most vaunted example is perhaps Amazon Go, the initiative that Jeff Bezos put into practice in 2016 and was advertised as a supermarket without assistants. Although in the following months the network of establishments in the United States was expanded, six years later the project has deflated and far from having expansion plans, points of sale have been closed. Agility and speed directly benefit the customer interested in minimizing interaction with assistants, whether in stores or supermarkets, but it can leave unattended those who seek personalized, close and, why not, human treatment. For this reason, in Spain the figure of the checkout staff is almost always maintained, essential for many consumers. “One consequence of this type of payment is the dehumanization of that moment of contact between brand and consumer. Does the agility of self-payment take precedence over personal contact? Can they be combined?” argues Zaplana. This hybrid system is the usual option in Spain: it is possible to find traditional checkouts, attended by employees, and next to them or in a specific space, the automatic terminals. Following the coronavirus crisis, when the need to minimize contact when going shopping was immediately internalized, they gained a certain popularity and, according to the latest data, their reception remains, in general, favorable among consumers. At least this was reflected in a study carried out by Capterra last May, which indicated that 66% of those surveyed who had used self-payment checkouts said they would use them again. However, if compared to countries such as the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom, Spaniards are less receptive to this technology. Lidl, the third supermarket chain in Spain, began to introduce the system in 2018 and the company indicates that “it has been gradually installed in the establishments”. “By the end of this year, the objective is that around 40% of our stores in Spain offer this service”, they add from the communications department. The centres where self-checkout is most used are “urban stores with the highest traffic”, they point out. And they remember that “self-checkout boxes are the most popular in Spain”. [autopago] They are a new service that complements the ones already in place in all Lidl stores in Spain.” Carrefour, Aldi, Eroski and Consum, which announced in May the expansion of its self-checkouts to 80 supermarkets and 262 terminals with the aim of “reducing queues and speeding up small purchases”, are other supermarkets where it is possible to manage payment independently. In the textile world, stores such as Uniqlo, Decathlon, H&M and the brands of the Inditex group rely on this technology. Unlike self-checkouts in supermarkets, where the customer normally reads the barcode of the product in question, the textile giants have been betting on RFID radio frequency technology for years (used, for example, to control the vast inventory of the stores), so that it is enough to deposit all the garments at once in the terminal to make the payment. If there are no problems, the operation is completed in just a few seconds. In addition, stores such as Zara have gone a step further by eliminating the plastic alarms that until now had to be removed from garments at the time of payment, thus saving one more step in the payment process. From the communications team at Bershka, the clothing brand closest to Inditex's young public, they comment that it was in December 2021 when they first introduced this technology, which did not arrive in Spain until February 2023, when the brand reopened the flagship store at Portal del Ángel in Barcelona, an establishment that has self-checkouts for card or cash. At this point of sale, they explain, «the checkouts are fully assisted by the store's salespeople. And only exchanges or returns are made through conventional checkouts.»
Impromptu conversations with checkout employees can be that loophole for those who are not in a hurry and prefer a less automated shopping experience. Tom Werner (Getty Images)The presence of self-checkouts is no longer anecdotal, although giants such as Mercadona or El Corte Inglés (where it is limited to the supermarket area) remain outside the automation of payment for the moment. A choice that could work as a differential value. “If a chain considers that a basic source of differentiation lies in maintaining or enhancing personal interactions between customers and workers or collaborators of the store, it may consider that introducing self-checkouts does not contribute to generating value for its business model,” says Sanzo.
The problem of theft and other challenges
On the other hand, the great advantage for companies is obvious: investing in these terminals could allow them to reduce the number of cashiers. The downside? Self-checkouts are equipped with cutting-edge technology, but the problem of theft has not yet been solved. According to data from the Barometer of Theft in Commercial Distribution, carried out by NIQ and the Association of Manufacturers and Consumers (AECOC) and presented in November 2023, “56% of companies admit that theft at self-checkouts is greater”. This is the opinion of Professor of Innovation at IE University Enrique Dans when referring to the “failure” of self-checkout: “In general, the fear of theft in distribution chains is leading to the implementation of multiple controls that lead the user to feel as if they were a usual suspect, forced to carry out multiple absurd operations ('deposit the item on the platform, don't touch it, oh my god, you've touched it, now call an employee!') that act as friction points in the process”. The “honourable exceptions” that, according to Dans, do work today are because they have been able to carry out “a maximum simplification of the process, because what the user wants is to carry out the operation as quickly as possible and without obstacles, given that they are supposedly saving costs for the establishment, and each additional point of friction is an indication of a poorly planned process”. The learning curve behind the terminals is another challenge for companies that can lose the opportunity to convince consumers if using the checkouts is too complex: “If the first few times they try to use these self-checkout points the user encounters problems, feels like they are being monitored in case they are a thief, and ends up feeling like they are stupid, it is very difficult to get them to try again”, adds Dans. Sanzo agrees with this reflection when he points out that poorly implemented self-checkout not only does not improve the customer experience, but can worsen it “because you have to keep queuing, the process is sometimes not intuitive, the machines are sensitive to how the product is placed, some products, such as fresh products, have to be weighed beforehand, sometimes the signal is not heard and the product is scanned several times, if something does not work you have to find an employee…”. The chat with the shopkeeper died as small businesses disappeared from the cities, so improvised conversations with checkout employees can be that loophole for those who are not in a hurry and prefer a less automated shopping experience. On the other side of the scale are those who find added value in immediacy, two ways of consuming that converge in hybrid spaces (the so-called phygital store).
