Media

Confident Customers: shopping is becoming a self - serve experience

Just think of all those lost conversations with cashier about the weather and the price of bananas. Today, more shoppers are opting to serve themselves at retail stores. According to an Ipsos Reid/NCR study, 56% of Canadians are more likely to shop at stores with self-service than those without. In a similar study conducted in 2004, only 27 said they preferred to shop at a store with self-checkout.

Why the jump? It has to do with familiarity, says Kent Porter, director of self-service solutions at NCR's retail group. "Canadians are very accustomed to serving themselves... and people adopt new technology quickly."
The survey suggests consumers want more of their shopping experience to go high tech, all in the name of convenience. Respondents said aside from self-checkout, there are other ways technology can make shopping more convenient. For example, 62% like the ability to check prices themselves and 30% said they would find it beneficial "to pay and collect a pre-ordered delivery."

The survey also found consumers are shopping more often but buying fewer items on each trip. Eighty-nine per cent of respondents shop between one and seven times a week, and most often their trips are for 10 or fewer items. "It's a quick shop, get in the store, grab something for dinner and get home," says Porter.
Yet consumers spend an average of 8.4 minutes lining up at the checkout and wait almost half an hour, on average, either trying to get information or to order something. More than half (52%) of shoppers said they feel frustrated waiting in line, which doesn't bode well for retailers. "Frustration tends to lead to abandoned baskets," say Porter," And that's a big cost to retailers."

That's one reason why retailers have introduced self checkout and why other high-tech gadgets are on the way that'll let consumers have more control of their shopping experience. One of those comes from Springboard Retail Networks, which last year launched a "smart-cart" touch screen computer called Concierge. Customers can create a grocery list online at home, and using an access key, plug into Concierge at the grocery store. As they place items into their carts, a bar code scanner checks items off their list.

The system can also make shopping suggestions; offer targeted discounts and show recipes or advertisements. "When you put the chips in at the Super Bowl, it's going to ask if you've got dip or salsa to go along with it," says Rob Segal, CEO of Springboard Retail Networks in Toronto.

The device is also equipped with GPS technology, so "if it's in the aisle that has Kellogg's Corn Flakes, it knows when you're there. It will automatically serve up the Corn Flakes ad when you're in proximity." As for the annoyance factor, Segal says consumers "didn't mind being advertised to if the advertiser was providing something," for example, a recipe. It's important to note the smart -cart device doesn't make any noise because "consumers told us they didn't really want to hear from the device." To date, Springboard Retail Networks hasn't signed on any retailers, but Segal says his company is in talks with three grocery chains.
However, there may be limits to how much technology consumers are willing to use when they go shopping. One analyst, for instance, isn't impressed with the idea of a smart cart. "It sounds exceptionally complicated," says Bill Ratcliffe, founder of marketing consultancy Venshore in Toronto. "It requires consumers to change their behavior substantially from how they currently shop so I’d be surprised if we ever saw it."

But Ratcliffe says in-store digital displays are the one technology we'll see more of "simply because the cost is coming down and the impact on purchases can be substantial."