Retail’s great technological leap forward has just been forced to take a few steps back.
Amazon has already back-tracked on no-card payments and now Booths supermarkets, often called “the Waitrose of the North,” have eliminated most of their unstaffed checkouts.
“We’re not great fans of self-checkouts,” the Booths managing director, Nigel Murray, told The Grocer. “We pride ourselves on great customer service and you can’t do that through a robot.”
According to The Guardian, “The chain is believed to be the first in the UK to go back to fully staffed tills and is swimming against the machines-tide, which has led to more big supermarkets adding trolley self-service bays to existing basket self-service and self-scan.”
Booths’ decision is – the upmarket chain of 28 outlets say – based on customer feedback.
The Guardian also reference MD Murray, “Booths began introducing self-checkouts six years ago. As with other supermarkets, it was a way of managing the wage bill and increasing efficiency, Murray said. But the technology could be problematic and detract from the enjoyment of shopping at Booths, he added.”
Unsurprisingly, many recent academic studies demonstrate that consumers, particularly older ones, are intimidated by the latest retail technology.
As one respondent told the global information analytics company, Elsevier, “I prefer the traditional cashier, I feel more comfortable with them…all these technologies and products make me feel uncomfortable…my nephew says that I have to learn, but I replied that I’m not able to.”
And even tech-titan Amazon have bowed to rebellious customers in their Fresh grocery stores.
As The Daily Mail reports, “Before, the only way customers could get inside an Amazon Fresh store was to open the Amazon app and get a QR code that they'd scan to open a barrier…But following revamps to the UK branches this autumn, Amazon Fresh is now letting customers walk into the shop normally.”
Again, a decision based on customer feedback. “We know customers want choice and recently we've been implementing more ways to pay in our stores, including introducing credit card capabilities and more traditional tills where customers can pay for their items,” a company spokesman told the Mail.
One step forward? Or two back? Only time and till receipts will tell.