Amazon Go

Companies have been discussing "checkout-less" stores since forever, but nobody has been brave enough to do it due to the perceived threat of shoplifting.

And while shoplifting is a legitimate threat, are non-shoplifters going to be turned into shoplifters without a checkout? Are normal shoplifters stopped by checkouts? These are the core questions, and until it is tested nobody will know for sure.

Target is getting awfully close to this. With their Cartwheel app you're meant to scan all your items as you shop (so it auto-applies coupons and discounts); but they haven't taken it to the next logical step and allowed you to provide your Cartwheel output at the checkout for checking out.

I will say that the way Target has implemented smartphone barcode scanning makes me think that there might be a future in all this. It is extremely painless, they just need to stop kicking you out of the scan screen when it finds a discount (i.e. it doesn't kick you out if no discount is found, but does when a discount IS found, that's problematic for efficiency reasons).

In the UK, Tesco have been running a 'Scan as you Shop'[0] thing for a couple of years now. Customers pick up a scanner as they enter, scan their items as they go into their cart, and they have special checkouts which read your scanner.

There's a random chance that your scanner will be audited by a human against the contents of your shopping cart. Usually the first time you use it, then it backs off.

[0] http://www.tesco.com/scan-as-you-shop/

Tesco also has pushed self scanning tills for years now.

However, the number of employees working at the cash register is still the same because those scanners sometimes do not work and most importantly their user experience is deplorable. So, you frequently have to ask someone for help (and I'm in my mid-thirties and very tech-savvy. I can only imagine how someone twice my age would feel when using these scanners).

> However, the number of employees working at the cash register is still the same

Actually the ratio of staff:active-self-checkout machines is planned to reduce in each new deployment as customers become accustomed to the machines. Starts around 1:2 and usually sits around 1:4 with a target of 1:8 or even 1:12 at quiet times.

That's definitely a reduction in cashiers since the machines displace existing check-out lines & registers.

Source: an acquaintance is a manager in a Tesco Superstore.