Love them or hate them, self-checkout lanes are showing up in more stores around the country. But some major retails are changing how they run self-checkout, according to a report by CNN.
Retailers told the news website that self-checkout appears to lead to higher merchandise losses from “shrink” — that’s an industry term for losses from customer errors and also from intentional shoplifting.
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Some studies have found self-checkout lanes and apps can lead to a higher loss rate. Some of this is because customers have problems scanning products, especially produce or meat that requires manually entering a code into the system.
But other customers apparently may take advantage of lax oversight and steal items.
Walmart has removed self-checkout machines from some stores. Costco has added more staff to self-checkout areas because it was found non-members were sneaking in with membership cards that weren’t theirs and then using self-checkout.
Five Below says it will increase the number of staffed cash registers as well.
To read the full report, head to the CNN website.
Regardless, self-checkout lanes are likely here to stay. An April study by retail analyst site VideoMining found self-checkout became the dominant checkout format in grocery stores in 2022, rising to 55% of transactions.
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