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Target announced it will change its self-checkout policies at all of its nearly 2,000 stores this weekend. Starting March 17, express self-checkout lanes at most of its stores will be limited to shoppers with 10 or fewer items to check out. If you have more than that, you will need to use a staffed checkout lane.
Goal He says The move is being made in response to guest feedback after the company tested the limits of self-checkout in about 200 stores last fall. Target says the result of this testing was a self-checkout experience that was twice as fast for customers. “By having the option to choose self-checkout for a quick trip, or a traditional staffed lane when their cart is full, guests we surveyed told us the overall checkout experience was better, too,” Target said.
The self-checkout experience has been a hot topic among American retailers and customers over the past few years. While self-checkout lanes have been around for decades, their use increased during the early years of the pandemic when social distancing became important.
Retailers have also benefited financially from using self-checkout lanes. The more self-checkout lanes a store has, the fewer human cashiers the store needs, saving labor costs.
However, self-checkout lanes have been a double-edged sword for retailers. Customer-controlled terminals have led to a rise in incidents of “shrinkage” — the retail industry’s term for loss of inventory due to theft or cashier errors. One disadvantage of self-checkout for retailers is that a customer may intentionally or inadvertently fail to scan one or more of the items in their shopping carts.
This has led some retailers to reduce their self-checkout lanes, although this has increased lines and wait times at checkout points staffed by human staff. These increasingly long queues have gone viral on social media, and are a bad image for retailers.
Target’s new self-checkout policy appears designed to address many of these frustrations. By keeping self-checkout lanes limited to 10 items or fewer, the retailer allows people with shorter shopping lists to get in and out of the store quickly. Curtailment may also be reduced if customers with larger orders are now required to use a staffed checkout lane.
To avoid backups in staffed checkout lanes due to new self-checkout restrictions, Target says it is “opening more brick-and-mortar lanes staffed by our team members in all of our stores.”
The goal changes come as some lawmakers have begun to take a look at self-checkout policies in stores, most notably examining how the lanes impact workers and economic growth. As for target customers who loved the ability to order dozens of items at self-checkout, you only have two days to continue doing so. Target’s new self-checkout policies will go into effect Sunday.
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