Cashierless Stores & Futuristic Experience Can Have a Big Impact But...

• On average, EIQ research shows that 6 in 10 consumers find current grocery experience full of friction. Over half of those surveyed said that the main source of friction is checkout related. Our research indicates that "a half a minute time gain in using mobile wallets or bank cards has a huge impact on the checkout process." Retailers such as Starbucks and Price Chopper agreed with these findings. While Starbucks is an early pioneer is launching mobile contactless wallet checkout, Price Chopper said that they have seen recent success with Apple Pay.
• Share of mobile and digital payments in terms of total transactions has increased over the last 12-24 months but it is still well below 10% for a majority of retailers. The share group agreed that a lot of work needs to be done by retailers and consumers in ensuring that digital attains higher consumer adoption levels that does justice to its convenience related promise. Even as consumers have to lap up new digital payments, it is the cashiers and employees in traditional retail stores who can make such adoption easier for consumers by prompting usage. Price Chopper said that it has seen effective improvements in Apple Pay transactions due to customer suggestions made at checkout by cashiers.
• Retailers are investing in new store concepts and even new brand concepts altogether, but the business justification has to be geared towards specific customer segments and addressing differentiated consumer needs. For instance, Price Chopper opened Market 32 in 2016 and others like Sun Flower Markets have invested in such concepts and have seen success due to hyper targeting of products, experience and messaging. 
• The meeting attendees also highlighted their favorite grocery concepts and top rankings were given to: Wegmans, Wholefoods, Publix, Giant Eagle, Trader Joe's, Roche, Others. This share group contended that these different grocery store concepts are effective in distinct business areas such as fresh, meats, deli, overall assortment, ease of checkout, pricing, overall convenience, friendliness of associates, among other reasons. 

To conclude, the true impact of cashierless stores and other new store concepts powered by mobile wallets, robotics, smart barcode sensors/scanners, AR/VR, other technologies will be even more profound when all retailers can benefit from common shelf, scan, checkout and pay standards and related capabilities. In other words, future customer experience should not only be in the domain or reach of just Amazon, Walmart, Kroger but all retailers who are willing to invest using a "customer first" approach.

To discuss retail and consumer goods technology benchmarks, trends and insights, please reach out for Sahir Anand, Managing VP Research & Strategy at [email protected] or @sahiranand.