New Report Reveals the Extent of Losses from Self-Checkout and Identifies Practical Ways to Manage it

Today, the ECR Community Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group (OSA) and NCR launched a new comprehensive report that assesses the potential impact of self-checkout (SCO) technologies on retail loss and provides best practices and guidance on how to address and balance risks. While the report “Self-Checkout in Retail: Measuring the Loss” found that levels of stock loss are higher at SCO than at staffed checkouts, it also points out that there are a variety of best-practice operational techniques as well as a range of existing and emerging technologies that retailers can use to keep shoppers honest and accurate.

“This is the first study that has been able to quantify the risks associated with SCO technologies and the evidence shows that they present a wide range of opportunities for customers to generate retail losses,” explained Adrian Beck, Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester and author of the study. “It was surprisingly difficult not only to obtain reliable, robust and verifiable data on the losses associated with SCO systems, but also on the effectiveness of the approaches being adopted to try and manage them.”

Retailers count their stock loss typically as a percentage of their sales, which, according to a prior ECR report, is about 0.67% of sales in grocery retail. This new report suggests that a typical retailer can experience an increase in stock loss of 1 basis point for every one percent of sales that go through fixed SCO machines. For instance, a typical store with 25% of their sales value going through fixed SCO could see additional stock losses of 0.25% of sales value.

Stores using Scan-and-Go technologies could see an increase of between 0.7 and 10.4 basis points of additional loss for every one percent of sales processed. In the study, the average utilization rate for Scan-and-Go was 2.8% of sales value, suggesting additional stock loss of between 0.01% and 0.29% of sales value.

John Fonteijn, Chair of the ECR Community Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group summarizes: “Retailing is becoming ever more dependent upon a host of technologies, many of which are increasingly focused upon improving the customer journey. This report will help retail organizations to continue to reap the benefits that self-scan technologies can bring while doing so within a sustainable business model.”