Technology may be death knell of queue
THE British pride themselves on their ability to queue calmly and patiently, but the prospect of standing in line while out shopping may soon become a memory of a bygone era.
A quarter of shops are planning to do away with queuing altogether within four years, by letting customers pay for items using their smartphones.
Transactions at manned, stationary point of sale check-outs are in freefall with the proportion falling from 71 per cent in 2012 to 52 per cent today.
The move by stores is in part a response to Brexit, according to a survey.
By getting rid of tills and staff, retailers will be able to cut costs at a time when they are seeing their margins squeezed as a result of the falling value of the pound and rising commodity prices.
Major retailers including Waitrose and Zara have already installed hi-tech payment and security systems that are likely to evolve into fully “queue-less” systems over the coming years.
Zara has installed clothes tags which let staff know where they are in stores. These could eventually be used to let customers scan garments and pay for them using their smartphones. Waitrose uses handheld selfscanning devices in some stores which let customers upload their shopping lists.
The latest mobile devices for self-scanning use Bluetooth technology to detect what a customer has just scanned.
They also allow the retailer to know where customers are in store and provide information, such as “don’t forget, that product is part of a special offer”.
Mark Thompson, director of retail and hospitality at Zebra Technologies, which conducted the research said: “In five years, a visit to the British high street will be massively different from today.
“Retailers want to put more power into the hands of shoppers, letting them pay with their mobiles as they browse, or giving them smart-carts with screens and built in scanning.
“The store itself will continue to get smarter as well. Retailers will be able to tell when and even where specific customers are in store.”