DIY from M&S
handful of its stores - not a diversification into a new business
area but a self-scanning trial which allows customers to scan, bag
and pay for their purchases entirely on their own.
Marks & Spencer, the UK food and clothing retailer, is to become the first British company to introduce do-it-yourself tills which will allow its customers to check out their own purchases.
The idea of customers scanning their own groceries is not new, and a number of other UK retail groups already have such systems in place. But what M&S claims makes its system, branded SCOT or Self Checkout Till, different is that the entire process can be carried out by the consumer without the intervention of a staff member.
"Unlike other self-scan products in use in the UK, which are all hand-held and require payment via a traditional till, the SCOT till will offer shoppers an additional rapid payment choice when they finish their shopping and provides increased privacy for purchases," the company said.
The new system, actually called NCR FastLane by its creators, will be trialled in a number of M&S outlets during the autumn, and is designed to help the company - whose food business has helped keep it afloat in recent years as the clothing business has struggled to find its own identity - improve its customer service and expand customer choice.
The new machines will allow customers at the three trial sites to self-scan and bag their purchases and then pay with cash, debit or credit card or M&S chargecard, as well as get cash-back, just like they would at any normal till.
The interactive touchscreen guides shoppers through every stage of the process with visual and verbal prompts. Software designed to weigh the bagged items detects any inconsistencies between what is scanned and what is placed in the bag. The SCOTs, which are networked into the Marks & Spencer global EPOS system, are programmed to recognise the bar code and exact weight of every product in store, from shallots to socks.
An attendant will be on hand at a central desk for each pod of four SCOTs to help customers with any queries and to facilitate payment by cheque or gift vouchers.
The three stores taking part in the trial, which will last twelve weeks, represent a cross-section of the Marks & Spencer store offering. The store in the Metro Shopping Centre in Gateshead (NE England) is a major out-of-town outlet, while Oxford represents the class city centre store. The third trial site is a regional centre store in Uxbridge (S England).
Barry Stevenson, director of UK retail stores at Marks & Spencer, said: "We are constantly looking at innovative technology to improve the customer offering, both proactively and in response to customer requests. The new self-checkout tills are being trialled as a way of expanding customer choice, whilst retaining our current till options and freeing up staff time to improve further the service levels in-store."
Self-checkout tills have already achieved significant success in the US with NCR machines already installed with over 30 retailers, according to Alberto Camuri, vice president of NCR's retail solutions division for Europe.
"NCR FastLane has been such a huge success with customers across the Atlantic and Europe that shoppers are choosing to go to stores that offer FastLane over stores which do not," he said. "Given NCR's local expertise in supporting this new technology and our long understanding of the UK retail market, we believe FastLane will be as successful in the UK."
In a UK survey undertaken in September 2001 for NCR by Marlin Research, more than 55 per cent of respondents said that they would be likely to use self-service checkouts, were they available, citing shorter queues, more control over transactions and increased privacy as advantages. This, of course, is the big drawback with other self-scanning systems in place in the UK - they do not avoid the queues at the checkout, as customers still have to pass via a member of staff to make their payments.
M&S gave no indication of whether the trial would be extended to other stores, or indeed whether it planned to introduce the SCOT system throughout its outlets if the trial was a success.
