I have an additional suggestion for JCP: make the antennas on the wifi checkout stations shaped like something your clientele might also enjoy sitting on.
They won’t have to worry about cash registers, or doors. They will be closed.
This sounds like a loser to me.. while younger folks may be fine with this, how do you think older shoppers will deal with it?
This guys trying something 20 years before he should IMHO, at least in a retail venue where you have a lot of elderly shoppers.
This approach makes a lot of assumptions about their clientele (that they are all technologically savvy, for starters) that may not be accurate. However, J C Penney is floundering and probably desperate to find a way back to profitability. I doubt this is it but I rarely shop at Penney's so I don't care much if it is - or not.
... as well as stores, warehouses, and trucks.
My Stop & Shop super market has some of the JCP planned technology, in use; for customers who choose to use it.
You register for the service at the Customer Service counter. The registration assigns the Credit/Debit card you select to your Stop & Shop savings card. When you enter the store, you can use your Stop and Shop card to pick up your owner scanner, to take with you when you shop - if you want.
You use it to scan the items you are putting in your cart. (It might be a different cart - I’m not sure). It is tabulating your bill as you shop. The one thing it can’t do is weigh your produce on an electronically connected scale (coming in the produ8ce dept they say). It does have a little screen, and although I’ve never used it, I am told it can make suggestions to you - like a similar item that is on sale.
When you are done shopping, you stop at one of the “Self Check Out” stands, scan your Stop & Shop card, and your bill is shown on the check out screen. If you registered with a Debit card, it will still ask for your Pin#. If you registered with a credit card, it will ask for your signature on the electronic pad. Then it prints your receipt. In all the Stop and Shop supermarkets I know, “Self Check Out” usually means “self bagging” generally unless someone is available.
As for as how much additional RID tags they have (or hope to add), to try to confirm you scanned all the items placed in your cart, I am not sure.
Myself, I don’t use it.
But I do use the “Self Check Out” stations. The lines are usually non-existent or shorter.
I can understand how these type of moves have become almost essential in the super market industry, where the profit margins average between $0.01 and $0.02 on the dollar.
But, clothing has HUGE mark-ups, and the mark-ups on housewares, furniture, electronics & jewelry are all greater than what Super Markets can do on food.
The JCP comment was:
“About 10% of all the money we spend, half a billion dollars a year, goes to [checkout] transactions.”
I am little perplexed about exactly what that means, and how it might compare with their industry - retail-general dept store, and with other retail industries. You’d think a good “journalist” would have researched that info and given it to the reader - with which to make our own judgment of the JCP comment.
Yet, if merchandize is sold, then how do you record the sale and debit the customer unless there IS a “checkout” transaction” - somewhere, somehow.
They obviously are NOT talking about NOT making a “check out transaction” - in some manner, but only looking at how to economize in the methods of doing it. It will be interesting to watch.
Is it too late to short the stock?