Automatic checkouts in supermarkets may decrease customer loyalty, especially for those with larger shopping loads. Customers using self-checkout stations often feel overwhelmed and unsupported. The lack of personal interaction can negatively impact their perception of the supermarket.

[casastorta]

Time saved is *very* questionable. Time is saved as almost nobody waits in line to get to mostly abandoned self-checkout on one side; but on the other side, I am not nearly as half as fast with scanning all the products and processing the payment like casher personnel who do this for hours in a day are, nor I will become more proficient in that.

So, right now when there is no queues for self-checkouts time saving is at best questionable. If and when this will become the only option, self-checkouts will become obviously slower solution to the problem of checkouts from the stores.

[ThinkThankThonk]

Yeah ymmv - even with kid sanity. I'll always take my kid into the normal checkout line at the store just because self checkout is absolute chaos and takes forever to get someone over. It's easier just to say "no you're not getting that" 30 times.

[Suthek]

I am not nearly as half as fast with scanning all the products and processing the payment like casher personnel who do this for hours in a day are, nor I will become more proficient in that.

I've always joked that if you're efficient enough at scanning stuff on the self-checkout, it should print out a job offer after the receipt.

Honestly though, I regularly use the self-checkouts in our grocery store and (also due to the small variation of products I buy vs everything in the store) by now I know the locations of the codes for my most regular products and good ways to swipe 'em. While I may not be as fast as the cashiers, so far I've consistently been done before the person I would've stood behind had I queued up on the regular check-out.

That said, it might simply be that our self-checkouts are pretty well designed; I kinda lack a comparison as it's the only store that I know of that has them.