Source: Walmart
Walmart’s self-checkout Scan & Go technology has been a hit with the company's Sam’s Club members. The same cannot be said for customers at the retailer's namesake stores. Walmart announced it has ended a test of the mobile technology in its stores.
"We're testing things all across the country at different stores and it's about what works best for the customer," Ragan Dickens, a Walmart spokesperson, told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. "We want the whole checkout process to be that seamless process. So, if there's points in the process that are not quite there yet on the seamless front, we take those learnings and we're plugging them into other areas of the store."
Interestingly, the Scan & Go pilot was not the first time Walmart has scrapped the technology. The retailer first began testing it in 2012 and expanded the pilot to a few hundred stores at the time. Walmart shut down the test in 2014 after concluding the chain’s customers were not able to figure out how to use the application.
When Walmart began the latest test at the beginning of last year, the chain’s management was confident its customers were ready. As it turned out, some customers preferred to leave tasks such as weighing produce to cashiers rather than doing it themselves. Others with large carts also found they’d rather leave the work to Walmart’s cashiers, while some, as in the first test, complained of the technology being too difficult to use.
While Walmart is putting Scan & Go on the shelf, the retailer has not completely abandoned the idea of cashier-less checkout. The company is currently testing “Check Out With Me,” which enables associates in it garden centers to ring up customers on the floor using cellular devices and Bluetooth printers. A test of the technology is currently taking place in 350 Walmart stores.