Study Finds Displays Effective at Self-Checkout Lanes

Dayton, OH -- The number of self-checkout lanes in supermarkets is steadily increasing, both in new and retrofitted stores, but along with the still-fairly-new technology have come questions about the effectiveness of merchandising in these areas. Mainly, should they be merchandised or should they be open?Working together, The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co., Chicago, The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, NCR Corp., Dayton, OH, and Supervalu, Minneapolis, recently conducted a study titled "Maximizing Impulse Sales at Self-Checkout." Island displays, integrated solutions displays, confections/magazines displays and pass-through beverage coolers with confections/magazines were all tested, and study results showed that displays merchandising all three "power categories" (beverages, confections and magazines) where the consumer comes within six to eight feet of these impulse items as they complete their self-checkout transaction are the best, according to Mike Inderrieden, director, human factors for NCR.Mike Lanaghan, Wrigley's manager, in-store strategy, says the study also helped debunk whether consumers would recognize self-checkouts more readily if there weren't impulse merchandise displays leading them into those lanes. "The study showed that for stores with merchandising displays for what we call the power categories leading into the self-checkouts, the actual share of transactions that went through those self-checkouts for that store increased." A lighted-confection rack generated an additional 11% in sales as compared to a display that was not lit, the study reported, and results showed that if a beverage cooler was directly adjacent to the self-checkout area, there was a drop of 16% in beverage sales as compared to the beverage cooler being at the self-checkout lane. "If there was no beverage cooler within 16 feet of the self-checkout," says Inderrieden, "beverage sales dropped by 40%."It wasn't until now that merchandising teams were involved with self-checkout areas; pilots were led by store operations or IT groups. But since a third of many supermarkets' customers now use the self-checkout, it has become more of a focus."The retailers and merchandising teams are getting more involved in how to best merchandise this area to positively impact revenues and offer their consumers convenient access to those items available at the full-service checkout lanes," says Inderrieden, noting that in most cases, there is less space allocated for impulse merchandise at self-checkout.As opposed to the full-service lanes, consumer behavior is different at self-checkout. "The consumer is actively involved in scanning and bagging their items and completing their payment, and there is a smaller window of time with which to engage consumers in considering impulse items for purchase," he adds, explaining one of the main reasons for doing the study.Impulse items have always sold well in the full-service lanes, so how do self-checkout lanes differ? For basket sizes less than $30, "the data shows at self-checkout we captured 94% of the impulse sales measured at the traditional lanes after making the recommended changes to the categories, assortment and displays," says Inderrieden. "This 94% compared to only capturing 60% of the impulse sales measured at the traditional lanes before any impulse merchandising changes were made to the test stores."Merchandising the self-checkout area not only increased self-checkout impulse sales per transaction, says Inderrieden, but it also increased the full-service checkout impulse sales by 4%. Additionally, self-checkout usage actually increased by 3% after the area was better merchandised.The study, which was conducted in the spring, collected baseline data on customer behaviors at self-checkout and analyzed 13 weeks' worth of P-O-S, item-level, transaction detail across a subset of Jewel-Osco stores to quantify impulse sales based on these stores' existing impulse displays and merchandising mix, explains Inderrieden. Adjustments to the categories, assortment and types/locations of the impulse displays at self-checkout were then made in the same stores. More consumer behavioral analyses and consumer exit interviews were conducted and an additional 13 weeks of P-O-S item-level sales data was analyzed to quantify the impact of the impulse merchandising changes made at the test stores. "We also analyzed P-O-S data from control stores in order to be able to control for any seasonality differences and/or pricing/promotions that occurred over the 26-week test period," says Inderrieden. CMG, Houston, an independent research and consulting firm, conducted all of the statistical analyses of the more than 2,900,000 customer transaction data for the project.

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