VideoMining’s recently released Front End MegaStudy revealed the remarkable rate of adoption of self-checkout in grocery stores, both by shoppers and retailers. Self-checkout registers have now become the dominant checkout format in grocery, with its share of transactions rising to 55% in 2022.

Retailers have been heavily investing in self-checkout technologies in an effort to improve the in-store shopping experience and reduce wait times, while also addressing the compounding business challenges around rising labor costs and labor shortages. Leading grocery retailers continue to strategically experiment with various configurations of checkout lanes and merchandising strategies to increase efficiency and drive impulse purchases in the front end.

Such investments are clearly paying off, as is reflected in the overall increased adoption rate of self-checkout, along with the promising rise of front end sales performance as captured in the Front End MegaStudy.

Shoppers Embrace Self-Checkout: Usage Increased by 53% in 5 Years

In just five years the usage of self-checkout by grocery shoppers has increased by 53%. In the past two years from 2020 to 2022, the usage increased by 17%.

Part of this was, of course, simply due to the increased availability of self-checkout options, as self-checkout registers made up 48% of all checkout registers by end of 2022. But shoppers were also actively choosing to use the self-checkout lanes as they become more accustomed to that option.

One of the most positive impacts of the widespread adoption of self-checkout was the reduction in shopper wait times. In 2022, 70% of shoppers did not have to wait in line at all, which was a significant improvement from 2017, where only 19% of shoppers did not encounter a wait time.

Productivity Boost: 162% Jump in Front End Sales at Self-Checkout

Despite the prevalence of shorter-to-no lines at self-checkout, there has been a massive increase in front end sales. There was a 162% jump in the dollars per 100 store visitors sold from self-checkout merchandising in two years (2022 vs 2020).

The same two-year period also saw a significant step-change in front end merchandising strategies, with a booming assortment of products from beverage coolers to queue walls.

The behavioral data captured via VideoMining’s Front End MegaStudy indicates a rising level of shoppers who notice these front end merchandising solutions at self-checkout, engage with the products featured, and physically pick up the products at a higher rate, despite the limited time spent waiting in line.

While the improved productivity of self-checkout is substantial, traditional staffed checkout lanes still take the prize for strongest performance. Traditional staffed lanes outperformed self-checkout lanes by 38% in terms of dollars per 100 store visitors in 2022. This performance gap continues to narrow, as indicated by the lane performance of 2000, where staffed lanes performed 2x better than self-checkout in terms of front end sales.

Layout, Merchandising & Assortment Matters

VideoMining’s MegaStudy shows there is a significant variation in shopper conversion rate (engagement and closure) with various merchandising configurations and product assortments. The dynamics of shopper flow vastly differ for each front end layout, and the most successful merchandising strategies were ones that matched that flow, and were therefore, more successful in engaging and converting shoppers. VideoMining’s findings indicate that there are different strategies and tactics required depending on self-checkout configuration and layout, with clear distinctions around layout type: (a) lanes, (b) open style, and (c) queue wall.

The Front End MegaStudy also found a massive disparity in space productivity for different categories in the front end, with the best and worst performing categories varying by more than 100x. This highlights a significant requirement for retailers to strategically consider such ways to drive efficiencies around front end assortment and think critically about their space allocation strategy.

Continued Innovation at Front End

As the front end dynamics continues to evolve, it’s particularly important for both suppliers and retailers to have a firm understanding of shopping behaviors and evolve their merchandising strategies accordingly to realize the full potential of impulse sales at checkout, especially in new self-checkout configurations.

The MegaStudy underscored the importance of reexamining front end merchandising strategies for different types of checkout processes and store formats to avoid missing out on a valuable source of incremental sales. Given the limited space at the front end, this requires careful optimization of layout, assortment and space allocation for different products using behavioral insights for test and learns. The combined power of VideoMining’s in-store panel, the largest in the industry, and its patented behavioral analytics platform powered by AI and machine learning, enables retailers and suppliers to unlock these previously-hidden behavioral patterns that can drive continued front end performance.