- Walmart Supercenters in St. Louis, Mo., and Cleveland, Ohio, are eliminating self-checkout.
- The change follows a similar move last year in three locations in New Mexico.
- Large retailers have taken other steps to address some of the issues raised by self-service technology.
Two Walmarts – one in Missouri and one in Oho – are ditching self-checkouts in an effort to improve the in-store experience.
The company confirmed the decisions to Business Insider in a statement, saying the changeover processes at the Cleveland Steelyard site and at a St. Louis-area supercenter would take place after hours and be completed in approximately two weeks.
Spokesman Brian Little said the decision was based on feedback from employees and customers, as well as local shopping habits.
“We believe this change will improve the in-store shopping experience and give our associates the ability to provide more personalized and efficient service,” he said.
If the news sounds familiar, that’s because three Walmart stores in New Mexico did the same thing last year.
Meanwhile, discount stores Dollar General and FiveBelow each said they would reduce or eliminate self-checkouts at their stores as those retailers struggle with high rates of missing inventory.
Walmart has more than 4,700 locations in the United States, and the company said at the time that it had no plans to remove self-service kiosks from stores on a large scale.
In addition to removing technology altogether from some stores, retailers including Walmart have taken a number of steps to address some of the challenges posed by self-checkout.
Earlier this year, BI reported that several Walmart locations were limiting access to self-checkouts to users of the company’s Walmart+ or Spark delivery apps.
Target instituted a change capping the number of items at ten or fewer in self-service lanes — a move the company said helped make the checkout process twice as fast as when there had no limits. Some stores have also started to limit the opening hours of self-checkouts.
Researchers have found that self-checkout leads to a phenomenon known as “shrinkage,” in which inventory is lost because customers do not correctly scan and pay for all items in their transactions.
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