80% of Consumers Interested in Self-Service Checkout, Two-Thirds Prefer It

As commerce skews ever digital, as we all get ever more used to doing things on our devices (by ourselves), the interest in trying something new extends to the checkout process.

It might be a natural progression. After all, browsing, selecting and moving toward payment options are all more user friendly than they had been before, and we’ve gotten used to not having to wait to get done the things we want to get done.

The report, Today’s Self-Service Shopping Journey: The New Retail Expectation, a PYMNTS and Toshiba collaboration, surveys of more than 2,000 consumers in the U.S. found that an average of 65 percent of those queried had made a purchase at the register, with a store employee. Roughly 34 percent of consumers who made a retail purchase did so with a self-service option.

But the interest in trying new methods of checking out — including self-service — is significant, coming in at 80 percent of consumers.

The gap between the interest in these methods and their actual use, we found, may be explained by the misconceptions about the efficiency of self-service kiosks. Some 11% of consumers said that they felt the machines would be difficult to use, while 22% said they wanted to avoid the mistakes that would mean that they’d have to have assistance from store members or other individuals at the kiosk.

In fact, once they tried the option, 66 percent of those surveyed found that self-service options are faster than alternatives. About 49 percent of consumers said that they used self-service to avoid waiting in line.