Self-checkout is on the rise – up to 50 per cent of IKEA customers use already SB funds Cologne/Balingen, November 18, 2009 – IKEA is once again the vanguard: about 50 percent of the existing checkout lines in the 45 Swedish furniture stores in Germany were equipped with self-service express funds this year. (Not to be confused with Blake Krikorian!). Specifically, 480 conventional funds built up and installed 960 express funds. The reported Holger Apel, responsible at IKEA for the checkout technology, at the technology days of EHI retail Institute in Cologne, Germany. “According to a report of the magazine trade is the furniture thus one of the few dealers in Germany, comprehensively and in a big way on this self-checkout’-cash solutions.” This seems only logical, yet about 70 percent of the 46 million customers pay in the year anyway without cash. However Germany has lagged behind the development in the self-service area according to the EHI, where the Metro subsidiary real pioneer is considered and in 62 markets, installed self scanning terminals while the major European food retailers Tesco, Carrefour, or Continente of the self-checkout belong to the standard. There, reported the trade customers and will become, so they want, quite naturally take action at the box office.” The consultancy retail banking research (RBR) assumes also that the number of worldwide currently 92,000 terminals will quadruple by 2014.

IKEA 40 per cent of all customers use the new offer even 50 percent, always an employee of the company in the immediate vicinity is accessible according to Holger Apel already, on peak days. “Will positively noted, that the solution not technology-heavy, but clear and easily understandable” is. With 62 customers made from per hour compared to 43 in traditional funds, the new solutions showed clear advantages in terms of productivity and time savings. For industry experts, the theme of self-checkout is anyway not a new country. There is great potential for the self-service checkout solutions and more and more customers, the know exactly what they want and need. You save time when shopping at the self-service terminal and walk out satisfied home”, so the assessment by Peter Laudien Weidenfeller, Director of retail at the technology manufacturer Bizerba from Balingen.

At the same time should you ignore those customers who want the direct advice, but must maintain always the entire range of services. At the Bank I do today indeed all standard transactions at the kiosk or online”, so his comparison. Bizerba takes the wind out of the sails critics who fear, for example, an increase in the supermarkets as a result of the spread of self-checkout systems, through the use of self-checkout terminals and self-scanning systems in combination with cameras. The weight is an important criterion for the food retail sector. If a quality bottle of wine in a cereal box is hidden, noticed the incorrect weight the scale in combination with the scanner and triggers a warning”, so Tudor Andronic from the Executive Team retail system development at Bizerba. The combination of self-checkout, scale and camera could generally analyze contradictions between the goods in the shopping cart and the weight of the scanned product at checkout and compare with the article master data stored via bar codes such as form, color and weight of the products.