Shaping the Checkout Experience: The Power of Consumer Perception

Welcome to our new Retail Razor Show, DataBlades, our new standalone Retail Razor

Show, where we talk real world numbers andslice through measurable consumer insights

based on research at the point of sale.

And bringing us that slicing and dicing ofdata is Georgina Nelson, CEO of TruRating.

TruRating helps retailers heardirectly from validated shoppers

daily, and recently had a majormilestone of half a billion responses.

Retailers using TruRating average an 80percent response rate on questions asked,

made possible by asking a single rotatingquestion directly on the POS pinpad.

Making it a seamless part of theshopper's checkout experience.

TruRating also works with theirretail partners to develop consumer

insights reports by running questionson an industry topic or theme.

These anonymous responses are linked tometrics such as basket size and repeat

visits to produce industry changinginsights like the ones Georgina will share

with us today and raise our data blades.

I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

And I'm your cohost, Casey Golden.

Welcome Georgina.

Thank you, it's good to be here today.

So today's Retail Razor DataBlades topic is all about how 'the

perception of choice is essentialduring the checkout experience.'

Please do tell us more Georgina.

So, earlier this year we askedover 14, 000 customers across the

US, UK and Australia what theirviews were of self checkout as they

shopped across a variety of stores.

And it was really interesting,basically appetite for self checkout

versus manned tills seem to reallybe affected and be impacted by

what sector you're shopping in.

So in the convenience sector, customersgenerally prefer to self checkout.

Obviously the convenienceand the speed being king.

But in apparel, where a consultative salewithin a store associate is more likely.

That fell to only 29 percent of customerssaying they'd ever prefer self checkout.

And as speed was clearly key, it'sinteresting to look at the number of

products which were in the basket.

Ultimately, there seems to be athreshold of if there are more than

three items in the basket, consumerswill look for that manned till.

And... Interestingly, in this step,which I'm sure we can all sympathize

with, one in five customers report facingchallenges with the ease of self-checkout

Oh, there's Ricardo.

That's me.

I'm that one

ha, ha.

What, what we also found, which, again,I think is, is really interesting, is

the option of whether there is a mannedtill or self checkout is really key.

When customers perceive thatself checkout is their only path.

They end up spending 29 percent less.

So, basically, if you feel that you'rebeing forced to use self checkout, your

shopping patterns actually change, and,when, while that looks such a, such a big

number, when I think to my own experience,if I can see it's only self checkout,

I'll just leave buying that bottle of wineto when I walk past the office later on.

I cannot be bothered to, yeah, forthe bell to ring, wait for a store

associate who doesn't obviously believethat I am under 21, I mean, who would?

ha, ha, ha, and yeah.

And so, I think retailers recognizingthat investing in that choice is

key to ensure that there is no dipin that average transaction spend.

Well, as we were joking about, Ithink I can definitely attest to that

because I immediately thought to, my,one of my, I would say probably least

favorite self checkout experiences areat home improvement stores, which seems

to be the trend now that they almostexclusively want you to use self checkout

and very rarely have anyone manning acheckout area unless it's for returns

or some other customer service area.

And, and I think that does factor inbecause I'll usually decide, well, if

fine, that's okay, because I'm onlygoing to buy one or two things anyway.

And so I'm only going tocarry those one or two things.

No matter how awkward those items may be,which they often are at a home improvement

store, I'll figure out how to get throughthe self checkout and hopefully not,

cause all the alarms to go off and we'llhave to wait for someone to come and fix

it because it wouldn't scan the item.

But yeah, that I, I would definitelyfeel as a consumer that I'm not likely

to buy a lot of things knowing that Ihave to go through that self checkout.

Also too, I think I use selfcheckout when I'm only buying a

couple things in general period.

So like it might also, there's, whoknows like that, that could definitely

skew the data at a home improvement.

I'm not going to go througha, buy a whole bunch of lumber

and a whole bunch of things.

And then go through self checkout.

I'm not lifting all that stuff.

You just put it in your cart.

Or heavier products, right?

So, you, there has to be a mix of both.

I don't think that we cango 100 percent one way.

It does change perception.

I kind of, I don't like the idea of it.

So it's just kind of like, thebrand's no longer relating to my DNA.

Cause they're now doing rolling somethingout that I don't believe in, but at

the same time being able to get thisinformation from the customers, like

essentially real time, I, I see thatit would be much more beneficial to

the decision makers on how they'remaking technology decisions, changes,

rolling it out across more locations.

I think it really is a criticalpoint where retailers have to

just ask questions to consumers.

Yeah.

Thank you, Casey!

I couldn't, I couldn't agree more.

Consumers are changing sorapidly, innovation, technology,

and store is changing rapidly.

And, for those, those two thingsto be in two step, it's, it's

key to be getting real time, upto date customer sentiment data.

And as you said, just simply, simplyask them, and then you're not operating

and making decisions in the dark,which can come to bite you later.

It's interesting is, and I think Costco isone example of retailer doing this, the,

the trend of, having, not obviously not amanned self checkout area, but having at

least one staff member standing by rightnear the self checkout area for those

moments when something does go wrong.

So they can quickly go over and help.

And I think, in the past selfcheckout was always presented as a

labor solution for retailers, right?

In the sense that, you would havefewer people staffing the checkout

area yet still have a good enoughprocess that it would provide.

A good experience for customerswhen they check out without

incurring any losses or anything.

But one person manning multipleself checkouts versus a one to one

correspondence to a manned checkout areais still a labor savings, I suppose.

But I, I I'm kind of curious, when youare working with the retailer, Georgina,

you have this kind of survey done andthey're looking at data like this.

What, what's a typical thing that you,so just to reach out and say, you know

what, how would you follow up with this?

Is the normal thing that happens thata retailer says, we've learned this

is a really interesting result andoutcome from this question we asked.

Now I want to go and ask adifferent question, and kind of

correlate the two to see what kindof insight they can come up with.

Or, do you usually see somethinglike this where it's a very

discrete kind of question.

They just want that answer andthen they're going to go off and

take actions against that result.

What, what do you find isthe more common approach?

Yeah, I think, asking a raft ofquestions to be able to, dig, dig deep.

But also just being able tolook at all the contextual data,

which you have around that.

So while on the face of it, it seemsvery simple Oh, it's just a, it's just a

question, because of our integration withthe POS, we can see, while all anonymous,

we can see what someone, the productswhich they bought, we can see how often

they return and how much they spent.

And so, if you're looking at your, yourexample of a home improvement store,

actually being able to work with theretailer to say, yeah, it's it is.

In the, when people are buyinghuge planks of, of wood, that's

when they have the most poorestexperience on the self checkout.

So maybe it's about, the ease of thatremote scanner or, or whatever it is, or,

yeah, really understanding that basket,that shopping basket mission and yeah,

and the profile of those consumers.

And so, You can take those insights andwhether that's yeah different investments

in technology or training, like yousaid, having an assisted, assisted

checkout, but, does it, do they standat the front and shepherd you to yeah,

shepherd you to the self checkout?

Do they help you scan the first item?

It's these kinds of things, which we'reworking with our retailers to test,

the AB test and really get that optimumconsumer journey and customer experience.

that makes sense.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense.

Well, that will do it for anotheredition of the Retail Razor Data Blades.

Georgina, thank you somuch for joining us.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you both.

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I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

Thanks for joining us.

Until next time, keep cuttingthrough the clutter and stay sharp.

This is the Retail Razor Data Blades.