Abstract:
Self-checkout technology, which once had high hopes from the retail industry and technology companies, is now facing more and more doubts. The latest industry survey shows that only about 36% of the retailers surveyed plan to continue investing in self-checkout systems in 2026. This proportion has dropped by 7 percentage points from 2025, making it the only category among all surveyed retail technologies that has seen a decline in investment intentions.
According to data from the 2026 "Voice of the Retail Industry" survey report, self-service checkout has become the least popular technology investment direction among the 340 retail companies surveyed. In contrast, other technology projects such as automated invoicing systems, electronic shelf labels and accounting software have received investment interest from at least 40% of companies.
For a long time, retailers' main reasons for promoting self-checkout were to increase transaction speed and reduce labor costs. However, data accumulated over the years suggests that the technology has not fully delivered on its initial promise. Some industry observers believe that the development of self-service checkouts proves that the value of professionally trained cashiers in the retail system is still difficult to completely replace. It is worth noting that consumers generally believe that self-checkout saves time, but this may not be the case in reality. As early as the late 1980s, when self-checkouts first appeared, Kroger Group Vice President Donald F. Dufek pointed out that self-checkouts usually cost customers more time, but because customers are personally involved in scanning the items, they tend to have a subjective impression of being "faster."
Ordinary customers typically scan items more slowly and are more likely to make operational errors than experienced cashiers, slowing down the overall checkout process. In addition, many consumers have encountered problems such as unrecognized products, false alarms from machines, or system failures. A 2021 survey showed that more than two-thirds of shoppers have encountered various technical problems when using self-checkout equipment.
In addition to efficiency issues, shrinkage and theft are important reasons for retailers to re-evaluate self-checkout. Whether customers accidentally miss items or deliberately commit theft, self-checkout systems are believed to increase losses for retail businesses.
Because of this, even if a self-checkout system is deployed, retailers still need to have employees on site to assist customers and oversee the transaction process. In recent years, major retailers such as Walmart, Costco and Kroger have beefed up staffing in self-checkout areas. At the same time, US discount retailer Dollar General will remove self-checkout services from approximately 12,000 stores in 2024.
U.S. retail giant Target has also adjusted relevant strategies, limiting the use of self-checkout lanes to customers with 10 items or less. The company believes that this type of equipment is more suitable for consumers who purchase small quantities of goods, and is not suitable for large-scale purchasing scenarios.
Amazon has also gone through a similar exploration process. The company has launched an unmanned supermarket concept in 2022 that does not require cashiers and checkout lines, hoping to replace the traditional checkout process with technology. However, two years later, Amazon eventually abandoned this plan and admitted that some work was actually simply transferred to a remote human review team in India.
As retail companies re-examine cost control and operational efficiency, self-checkout is gradually changing from a once highly sought-after innovative technology to a tool that requires careful evaluation of input and output. For many retailers, how to find a balance between automation and manual services may be more important than simply pursuing "unmanned".
Comments