Coming (Eventually) To A Supermarket Near You: Scanning Groceries While Shopping
CONTRIBUTOR
I cover the business of food, from artichokes to zucchini.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket chain, is testing a Scan-Bag-Go system at a store I often shop at, about 30 minutes away from its headquarters in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. This is technology that allows consumers to scan items before putting them in the cart, making for a faster checkout experience.
Because this is technology that could someday make it at your neighborhood supermarket, if it hasn’t already, I decided to check it out.
Is it the next best thing to the sliced bread that supermarkets sell?
Maybe. If you’re a millennial who loves technology, you’ll probably Scan-Bag-Go. If you don’t mind zoning out in line and having someone else help you bag your groceries, then this may not be your thing.
A close up of Kroger’s Scan-Bag-Go handheld scanner (photo by Isabelle Williams).
How it works. Two nights ago, my 11-year-old daughter, Lorelei, accompanied me to a Kroger in Goshen, Ohio. I told Lorelei that we weren’t simply grocery shopping. We were doing research for a Forbes blog post. That’s when she told me that this technology is hardly new, making me feel (not for the first time) like a middle-aged dinosaur.
“England has a lot of stores that do this,” she told me. “There are videos on YouTube about it.” Indeed, there are.
In fact, “in the U.K, grocers such as Waitrose and Tesco implemented handheld scanner technology as early as three and 10 years ago, respectively,” says Oliver Guy, the retail industry director for Software AG, a business that helps retailers grow sales and become more efficient.
In the U.S., Kroger has been trying out mobile scanning since 2011 at a small number of stores, and Walmart and Stop & Shop have tested the technologyas well.
The Scan-Bag-Go mini-kiosk, for lack of a better word, was waiting for us in the lobby of the store, between the electronic sliding doors and near the grocery carts. You pull out some paper bags from the kiosk and take what looks like a large TV remote control. You do have the option of using your smartphone with the Scan-Bag-Go setup. As you’ve probably already figured out, I’m not a tech guru, and so I didn’t even bother, and maybe it’s just as well.
Guy isn’t a fan of using smartphones to scan. He says that it’s a much more difficult process in doing that, and that the handheld scanners are a lot easier. He also points out that a benefit of using the handheld scanners over the smartphone is that you aren’t draining your battery. So do with that information what you will.
Lorelei and I took the large TV remote control and went shopping. I had a vague idea of what I needed, coming, as I too often do, without a shopping list. But since the remote allows you to see how much you’re spending every time you scan your item, it gives you a fighting chance to keep within your budget. That’s something I liked a lot, and why I may well adopt this technology if it catches on. On this particular trip, I planned on spending about $40.
As for the remote, you start by typing in your Kroger shoppers’ identification number, assuming you have one, so you can get the discounts automatically.
We started off with buying a package of hamburger.
It took me a couple tries to scan it correctly. You have to scan it at a 45-degree angle, and so I was left wondering whether I hold the remote or the food item at a 45-degree angle, but all in all, once I got the hang of it – and you’d have to have a pretty low I.Q. to not figure it out quickly – scanning was a breeze.
At least one downside. Still, some things about scanning while shopping will take some getting used to, as I realized when I tossed a couple packages of toilet paper into the paper bag.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
Lorelei looked shocked.
I froze. “What?”
“You forgot to use the scanner,” she said.
Rattled, I realized she was right. If you’re not scanning while shopping when you’re supposed to be scanning while shopping then you’re basically shoplifting.
Barry Clogan, senior vice-president of business consulting services atMyWebGrocer.com, a provider of digital services to grocery stores across the country, says that this is a downside of scanning while you shop.
“While I am a great advocate of technology in retail the benefits of scan as you shop are muted from an operational perspective. While there is a payroll and productivity gain in store this is negated by an increase in shrink or theft,” Clogan says, adding that some stores, to mitigate this, will randomly check shoppers baskets, to make sure that they’ve scanned everything.
“Customer feedback regularly refers to the anxiety customers feel, the fear that they will be checked and will be assumed a thief by the checkout assistant. If you have one irregular check you are more likely to get audited again on future shopping trips,” he adds.
Anyway, I pulled out the toilet paper, both packages, and scanned them, and we continued on our way.
A plus and minus mixed into one. Does this save time? I’m not really sure. We were more deliberate in our shopping, scanning and bagging as we went along, and so I think we didn’t save time. But we probably did save money. You get to see how much you’re spending (and with discounts, how much you’re saving), and because you watch those numbers add up, it probably does curb one’s impulse to just throw whatever looks tasty into the cart.And then when you finish your shopping, you still have to go to the self-checkout aisle. Somehow I had missed that point, half thinking that we could walk out the store with our bags of groceries. And there was a line for the self-checkout aisle, and so we didn’t avoid any lines.
But the line moved fast, and once you get to the self-checkout register, it is a fast experience. You take the remote and point it at a black bar at the self-checkout terminal, and then you pay.
So will this catch on? Eric Shea, a partner with Kurt Salmon Digital, a company that specializes in helping retailers interact with digitally connected consumers, thinks so.
Shea thinks that when grocery stores are at its most crowded, people probably will grab the scanners and use them to speed up the checkout process. He says that just having the technology automatically improves a store’s brand.
“This is especially true for millennials, many of whom already shop or compare prices with their mobile phones,” he says.
Shea also says that the technology can free up cashiers to do other tasks, like restocking or interacting with customers, and he thinks it could cause people to spend more.
“Consumers who would have used express lanes may instead choose to do a full shopping trip,” Shea says.
Maybe, but I’m dubious. I know using the technology, at least on my first scan-as-you-shop outing, caused me to spend less and not more. My youngest daughter and I were so careful and deliberate in our shopping that we only spent $22. That was welcome news. I was obviously happy not to overspend.
But it also meant that I didn’t buy much, and sure enough, I was back grocery shopping the next day.
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