Waiting in line at a retail checkout station is frustrating, tiring and a waste of time. Retailers know that and, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, stores are trying new approaches to get shoppers through faster and more gracefully. It’s in their best interest as online shopping threatens to continue siphoning sales.
Check-out registers at Target
During the recent holiday season, nearly half of U.S. consumers said they planned to shop online, up from a third of the shoppers in 2010. The consulting firm Deloitte reported that shoppers tend to become impatient quickly and fail to take into account key indicators of what might slow down a line. They feel remorse when they think they’ve chosen the wrong (slower) line. Yet they prefer to choose their own line rather than wait in a single line for the next available register – even though that set-up has proven to be faster!
Apple Store Clerk
Stores are trying to solve line issues in various ways. Apple clerks use hand-held devices to ring up sales anywhere in the store and you can now use your Apple Store app to self-check-out for items off the shelves. Home Depot has added mobile checkouts. Whole Foods Markets, Inc. and various big-box retailers have been expanding self-checkout lanes. Disney Co. believes pre-scanning items while shoppers are in a single-file line is perceived as less chaotic than multiple lines.
Customers have their own strategies such as eyeing the items in carts ahead, and assessing the age of shoppers or the number of children tagging along so as to avoid slow shoppers. And they might check the age and sex of cashiers. Young male cashiers are usually faster, but tend to be sloppy and careless when bagging. Middle-aged female checkers are slower, but tend to take better care of fragile items.
Shoppers are likely to abandon a line after the first two to three minutes if they suspect the line isn’t moving fast enough. Envirosell, a retail consulting firm, timed shoppers in line to determine how real wait time compares with the shopper’s idea of wait time. Up to two or three minutes, the estimate was accurate. After three minutes, the wait time multiplied in their minds.
In research posted on YouTube, a single-file line leading to three cashiers is about three times faster than having a separate line for each cashier. Any delay in the multiple-line system will stop the line completely, while a delay in a single line might just delay one shopper. Although the single-line method may be faster, customers generally prefer to “jockey for position” in separate lines.
So as the weather warms up and you hit the stores for Valentine’s, Easter and Spring goodies, maybe do you own experiment. Let us know what your best methods are.
