Supermarket empire checks out DIY checkouts

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Supermarket giant Progressive Enterprises is investigating ways for shoppers to check out their own groceries, although it promises not to do away with human hands.

The firm, which has added Woolworths and Big Fresh to its stable of Foodtown, Countdown and Three Guys supermarkets, is keeping a close eye on a pilot self-scanning scheme run by the rival Foodstuffs chain at various Wellington stores.

Progressive managing director Ted van Arkel refused yesterday to give away any top-secret strategy for his enlarged empire, but said: "We are certainly looking at our various options."

He believed customers might take a bit of convincing before braving any self-checkout technology, but observed that most people were now well-versed in using Eftpos and ATMs after slow starts.

Meanwhile, he assured customers that Progressive supermarkets would always keep some of its checkouts for those preferring their goods checked out for them by real people.

Although almost 20 per cent of American food retailers are understood to be using self-checkout technology, including infrared rays to track goods throughout their stores, Australia and New Zealand have been much slower to buy the idea.

Foodstuffs New Zealand managing director Tony Carter said the group's Wellington franchise had reported steady but unspectacular interest in the self-scanning technology available in six Pak 'N Save supermarkets for several years.

About 20 per cent of customers availed themselves of "wands" which scanned barcodes as they wandered about supermarkets collecting groceries, before "downloading" the results at checkouts.

Very few people cheated by slipping through items without scanning them, but people caught out through random checks were marked for full audits on subsequent shopping trips.

Mr Carter said US supermarkets commonly had higher-level technology, with shoppers' trolleyloads being self-scanned at checkouts that also had electronic weighing and payment facilities.

But it was very expensive, and he would not be drawn on any plans to introduce it to New Zealand, despite efforts by software giant NCR to win over Australian retailers at a conference in Melbourne this week.

He acknowledged there would always be shoppers who preferred the human treatment.

Consumers' Institute chief executive David Russell said the fact that the Wellington self-scanning trials had yet to spread to the rest of the country suggested there was no great demand yet for the technology.

"It suggests we are still very much social beings."