‘It seems counterintuitive’: Why self-service checkouts still divide Australians

A growing number of retailers overseas have ditched the feature in recent months – but there’s a reason Australia won’t see the back of them anytime soon.

No topic remains quite as divisive among Australians as the presence of self-service checkouts in stores.

This year saw the use of the facilities – implemented nearly a decade ago by stores at home and abroad in the hope of speeding up lines and cutting labour costs – reconsidered by a handful of global supermarket chains, following complaints that both service and human interaction was lacking.

“Our customers have told us this over time – that the self-scan machines that we’ve got in our stores … can be slow, they can be unreliable [and] they’re obviously impersonal,” Booths managing director Nigel Murray told the BBC.

The British retailer announced in November it would remove the kiosks from all but two of its 28 grocery stores.

The technology could also be “problematic” for customers, Mr Murray said, when it came to identifying and weighing specific fruit or vegetable varietals, or purchasing alcohol.

“Some customers don’t know one different apple versus another, for example,” he explained.

“There’s all sorts of fussing about with that and then the minute you put any alcohol in your basket, somebody’s got to come and check that you’re of the right age.”

No topic still proves quite as divisive among Australians as the presence of self-service checkouts in stores.

‘Consumers have different preferences when it comes to shopping, and if consumers are given a choice … then they can choose what they prefer.’

Despite similar criticism being levelled at Australia’s two major supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, neither intend to follow suit.

Representatives for both grocery giants previously told news.com.au that staffed registers and self-checkout hold equal merit – a sentiment echoed by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Business School Associate Professor, Paula Dootson.

“Consumers have different preferences when it comes to shopping, and if consumers are given a choice – self-checkout or staffed checkout – then they can choose what they prefer,” Professor Dootson, a cross-disciplinary researcher in consumer behaviour and digital transformation, told news.com.au.

What frustrates shoppers, she explained, is “when they either do not get the choice, or they find themselves waiting in line and there are empty checkouts that they think they could be using rather than waiting in line, causing anger … with how the store is allocating their resources”.

Professor of Marketing at Sydney University’s Business School, Vince Mitchell, attributed prevailing myths about self-checkouts – namely that they’ve reduced the number of jobs – to a lack of understanding about resource deployment.

“I just don’t think it’s been well explained that checkout staff are redeployed doing other things, and [that] not all of those other things benefit consumers in the same way as seeing someone help you with your groceries does,” Professor Mitchell told news.com.au.

“It seems counterintuitive to people that you take people away from ‘visible’ work, and they do things that are ‘invisible’ to shoppers.”

‘Staffed checkouts create a more inclusive store experience for people who are unable to use the self-checkouts.’

Professor Dootson agreed. “Customers see less staffed checkouts when self-checkouts are put in store, but they do not see an increase in staff behind the scenes to service the other models of consumption like e-commerce (delivery) and click and collect,” she said.

In a November update, Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci insisted there are now “more jobs at Woolies, not less” to cater to rapid grocery delivery, the traditional in-store experience and other options like Direct to Boot.

Compared to five years ago, Coles has also “recruited an additional 22,000 Team Members”, a spokesperson said.

“Moving staff from the boring repetitive function of scanning products into more interesting functions of helping customers within the stores and providing a friendly face to engage with, seems a very good redeployment of these frontline workers which benefits customers and employee job satisfaction,” Professor Mitchell said.

‘There will always be a need for someone to be around the checkout to help with problems.’ Picture: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Asked whether society will ever move beyond a need for staffed checkouts, both Professor Dootson and Professor Mitchell pointed to Amazon Go, the cashier-less (thus partially automated) convenience stores in the US and UK operated by Jeff Bezos’ online retail behemoth.

“[It] has led the way to show this is possible and, of course, online grocery delivery has no checkout staff – so this is increasingly the case,” Prof Mitchell said.

“However, for mainstream supermarkets who service the whole community with very diverse needs, it’s likely there will always be a need for someone to be around the checkout to help with problems.”

Even “past innovative store designs like Amazon Go’s ‘just walk out’ store is seeing staff introduced”, Prof Dootson said – proof that “even with the digital transformation of retail, there will always be a place for staffed checkouts, as different consumers have different preferences”.

“If technology fails (power outage, technical malfunction), having staff present to help the customer with the service failure is critical to manage customer satisfaction and patronage of the store in the future,” she added.

“Staffed checkouts also create a more inclusive store experience for people who are unable to use the self-checkouts.”