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Panasonic's New Shopping System Automatically Bags, Tallies Your Bill (techcrunch.com)
The Wall Street Journal is reporting (Warning: paywalled; alternate source) that Panasonic is "introducing convenience-store checkout machines that can scan and bag items on their own, joining Amazon.com Inc. in the push for more retail automation." The machines will also tally up the total amount owed at checkout so that all you have to do is pay. TechCrunch reports: Last week, Amazon revealed its own more frictionless convenience store pilot, with a location that lets shoppers simply walk out with whatever they want to purchase, for which they're charged automatically via their Amazon account. The Panasonic system uses tags applied to the goods you pick up to tally the cost as you shop, and then automatically bags your selections via a trap-door in the counter that accepts your basket when you're ready to go. It could help with lines, and could also help address some of the issues with current self-checkout system, which require a user to scan their own items to find out their bill prior to paying. That added step may seem small, but it actually causes a lot of headaches and hangups, especially with shoppers who aren't so comfortable with tech. Panasonic's setup is already in use at a Lawson convenience store near its Osaka HQ, but the broader rollout is still a while off.
As a matter of policy I never use the automated checkout. I never push in a cart from the parking lot. These are tasks for employees who value/need their job. It's not my place to usurp that or contribute to bonuses for CEOs who will be rewarded for eliminating jobs. Perhaps this attitude will cost consumers a few extra pennies; I don't care.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Stores seem to be tripping over themselves to spend money on automated systems to make it easy just to walk in and walk out with what you want. No extra fees, no hassle. People need to remember that any time.... any time they spend money it's with the expectation of getting twice as much back. The motivation can't be to get people in, because once more than one place has it it's no longer a novelty and they don't get increased business. So it's just a straight cost. So if it's just a straight cost, where is the recap? It's in selling out your privacy, shopping habits, brand choices, and movements. In short, we, again, are the commodity being traded.
No thanks. Minority Report holds no appeal for me, and no government seems to want to put any checks on violations of privacy.
What did we do with the millions that no longer work in agriculture? Or in jobs that disappeared as a result of the industrial revolution?
Usually for a 30% mark up over an equivalent item at the back of the store.
An item's price at the front is going to be the same as its price at the back. The UPC code is the same, and the store has no way of knowing if you picked it up in line or while shopping at the back of the store. They're going to lose money every time someone has to stop the checkout process to say "that's the wrong price" or worse, return the item after it has been purchased.
They check out groceries in convenience stores.
How do you dispute charges for something like this? How do you prove that you didn't walk out of there with something that their computer system says that you did?
While the convenience is nice for something like this, and as long as it is working as it is intended, everything will be fine.
But you know... Murphy's law and everything.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They check out groceries in convenience stores.
Nope. Back in the 19th century WAY more people worked in retail, because customers were not allowed near the merchandise. A customer would enter the store, walk up to the counter, and give a clerk their list of items. The clerk would then go into the storage room and retrieve the items, bring them to the counter, and tally the bill.
This changed when "self-shopping" was introduced in the 1880s by F. W. Woolworth. This revolutionized retail, and created a whole new pastime of recreational shopping without an apriori shopping list.
So, no, the farmers did not become store clerks, because the clerks were getting laid off at the same time. It is also silly to refuse to use self-checkout because "that's the employee's job" when fetching the merchandise used to be their job too. Times change.
Yup, we have the same in France too (at Carrefour and Auchan). It's called Scan'lib for Carrefour, and it's powered by Motorola. To those who are not familiar with the concept : you scan each of the goods you want to buy when you pick it, and at the end of your "store trip", go to a specific station in order to unload your "scanner" (it's more a small terminal than a simple scanner), to pay and have your ticket. But ! there is random controls by some security guards in order to confirm the correlation between the content of your cart and your ticket.
;)).
I've seen something more close to this concept : the 360 Scanner by Diebold (formerly Wincor) Nixdorf (information and pictures about it here : http://www.lsa-conso.fr/produi... [french]) : in order to avoid price tag swapping, the system check if the total volume and size of the stuff you're buying match the database records of it (of course, it scan the barcode by using the multiple scanners on the POS). This product has been built in order to satisfy the retailers who weren't wanting to RFID tag all their products (imagine that in a Carrefour, and the cost it implie) : to me, a bad solution to a false problem (there's some flaws : no weight control, mecanical problems, necessity to have an operator to check if the product are well separated when entering the scanner zone (in order to permit the identification of all goods), and other things I can't tell because of NDA