Costco customers have largely rejected self-checkout, and the warehouse club has responded by removing it from most stores.
This follows recent trends where both Walmart and Target have limited many automatic checkouts to a maximum amount of items. In a sense, these changes were made to limit opportunities for theft and prevent scanning errors that lead to accidental theft, while also preserving self-checkout for people with only a few items.
It’s quite similar to the “10 items or less” boxes that used to be common in grocery stores.
But just because Costco has pulled back from self-checkout, doesn’t mean the chain has given up on helping you pay for your items more efficiently. In fact, it is implementing two ways to speed up the ordering process in its stores, including allowing customers to scan as they go.
One of the challenges Costco shoppers face is that the chain sells in bulk. Many of its items are large, and in a traditional self-checkout, it can be difficult to manipulate these items to scan the UPC code.
Scan and Go technology will solve this, but requires customer acceptance.
“We’ve found that digital really improves checkout speed. And so we’re working hard on digital membership card usage as well. We’ve also been involved in some of the ‘Scan & Go by Costco’ types of tests that we’re doing there, which have been extremely successful in moving people through lines and speeding up transactions,” CEO Ron Vachris said during costerco’s-earnings.
Scan & Go requires customers to scan items as they go using the Costco app on their phone. Once they’ve completed their purchase, they can display a QR code that verifies what they’ve purchased as they exit the store.
“We’ve seen some very, very early results that have been very positive and it’s been very good from our members seeing that as well,” the CEO added.
Vachris said Costco management wants to improve the in-store experience for members.
“Our operations team is really focused on the front end, and we know there’s a lot of benefit to that part of the Costco experience to move people through a lot better. So it’s really leveraging the digital enhancements that we have available today, and we think we’re going to see some good things come through there,” he added.
The CEO talked about another big pay change in a more recent earnings call.
“Another way we’re improving the member experience is by rolling out enhanced payment technology across all U.S. warehouses,” Vachris said during the warehouse club’s fourth-quarter earnings call.