I think a better comparison would be people complaining about frictionless checkout (where you just walk out like Amazon grocery stores) in the same way as shopping carts, which is actually a whole new and better experience but can feel so weird that people feel uncomfortable about it.
(disclaimer: I’ve never actually tried an Amazon Go store but I do avoid self-checkout whenever I have fruits/veggies to check out)
This makes some assumptions.
Off the top of my head:
1) The shopkeeper is always available to grab your purchases without a wait. 2) You already know exactly which products you want, and/or there aren't different versions of products to select between. 3) The shopkeeper is trustworthy enough to get you the actual products you want. 4) You aren't a person that the shopkeeper is going to discriminate against.
There are lots of good reasons to want to pick out your own groceries.
There's definitely advantages to someone picking out your groceries for you, but also some drawbacks.
Give me whole milk is easier and simpler than “give me this particular brand of whole milk”.
When you have needs—or even just desires—that aren't The One Available Product, suddenly you're SOL. Sometimes with grievous health consequences.
• You're able to speak loud and clear.
• You can speak the same language as the shopkeeper.
even this depends on the type of shopper you are. if I'm buying a bunch of pasta, curbside pickup is great, and delivery is even better. but if I'm buying an ny strip, I want to see all the choices and pick the one that looks best. similar for fruits and vegetables, I don't trust the professional shopper to evaluate ripeness on my behalf. some things you just have to do yourself.
Home Depot gets it right. They have a large table with a handheld wireless scanner, a receipt printer, a card payment terminal, and a touch screen that you don't need to interact with at all. All you have to do is start scanning and tap your card when you're done.
My solution is to avoid self-checkout at stores with crappy machines, or avoid those stores altogether. If Home Depot can do good self-checkout, why can't everyone else? That's the primary reason I frequent HD over Lowe's.
I've been seeing this more often in the past few months at understaffed low-cost retailers. When there's nobody around to override the machines, people get frustrated and move on to the next open machine without understanding what went wrong.
Five minutes later, the entire self-checkout area is offline, and the would-be customer sometimes feels sufficiently annoyed and neglected to walk off with their groceries.
Right, like I mentioned, it was a very weird first time experience. But my question was addressed to the parent commenter, who is clearly not a first-time user and is aware of how these systems work.
I was asking how it remains a hurdle to someone who's already familiar with it, because this is very far from my own experience. I honestly don't even notice the scale requirement anymore, because placing things on the scale has become subconscious
The store can damn well afford to pay someone to scan and bag the items, while I do the loyalty-card, payment-card cha-cha. The store isn't paying me to do all this shit.
It's fast, there are no lines, it's less work for everyone.
This is new to me. Do you just mean that the placement is decided by distributors? I'm pretty sure I have seen store employees putting stuff on the shelves from time to time at my local supermarket.
Smaller stores and chains are often stocked by the store itself, even if Coke delivered the pallet.
The end caps of isles are sold to the highest bidder, typically by the week; if that bidder is coca-cola they manage that display as well, subject to the constraints of the store.
One of the innovations of Frys Electronics was to try to run their shops that way, as they started by selling serial cables and other computer supplies in their family's grocery chain. It only partially worked as the vendors weren't really equipped to do this, the way the food companies are.