HOW SELF CHECKOUTS HURT A SUPERMARKET'S BRAND?

"Billings WinCo removes self-checkout lanes; expert weighs in on reasons why. The employee-owned grocery store, WinCo Foods, has eradicated all of its self-checkout lanes at its Billings store, opting for a more traditional shopping experience." - Montana's News Leader reports.

Technology companies are driving many business decisions that have a long-term impact on consumer loyalty and brand perceptions. Business leaders and executives need to be aware of technology and engineering perspectives and framework, before jumping on every efficiency bandwagon. 

Historically, IT or engineering frameworks consider consumers as a data point or part of an operational system, not a person. Therefore, most IT and engineering business solutions only think of minimizing steps, reducing time, or scaling up capacity - never about building profitable relationship. Take traffic for example. Engineering solutions generally propose expanding or adding lanes to solve traffic problem, which works well for a short period but then creates even bigger bottle necks. It also creates enormous expenses for cities, counties and states to manage ever expanding road networks. One can see this by visiting any populated U.S. city and how bad traffic gets during weekdays. 

Similarly engineering framework always considers time reduction as success. In human reality, time is measured based on the quality of experience, not always the number of minutes. If experience is great, time is more enjoyable, therefore, people use the phrase "we had good time". During a bad experience, even a couple of minutes can feel like a lifetime. IT and tech mindset ignores it and can seriously damage a brand's connection to its customers.

By over indexing on efficiency and speed, supermarkets are commoditizing their own brands and laying the foundation of losing connection with their neighborhood communities. Billings, MT WinCo Foods realized the negative impact and is pivoting back to bringing human connection in this digital age. Trader Joe's is another great example of continuing with great personal experience checkouts; not letting IT companies dilute their brand value to sacrifice goodwill with their customers. 

There's enough data to indicate that consumers who make the effort to visit their supermarket or store are disappointed to "have to work" for the store they are buying from. "It hasn't delivered: The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology" reports BBC News article about the failure of self-checkout concept. 

A grocery chain is removing self-checkout after realizing executives hate it as much as customers do: ‘We like to talk to people’ - reports Yahoo Finance.

Automation and efficiency is a good thing, but not at the expense of commoditizing one's brand, creating distance from customers, and losing consumer loyalty. Business leaders should be careful that they may be investing in going out of business through un-human automation.

SO WHAT SHOULD LEADERS DO?

Executives and leaders should not let technology or finance take over their overall business strategy. These two disciplines have tactical value to support a holistic growth strategy. Engineering and finance mindsets typically look at market only from scarcity perspective and tend to miss out the real human picture and dynamics. True leaders are able to timely distinguish between an unnecessary hype or trend, and find ways to develop deeper relations with their customers despite technological barriers, presented as efficiency. 

Ehsaan Way aims to bring beneficent excellence in business, leadership, communities and economy through thoughtful brand growth strategies and QA programs.