Discount giant Walmart is now testing a new store design that puts the self-checkout experience front and centre.
American multinational retail corporation Walmart last month opened a pilot supercentre format in Fayetteville, North Carolina which has taken the normal in-person checkout lanes and instead incorporated self-checkout kiosks. Instead of arranging POS terminals in lanes, the store has a front-end layout in which 34 registers line the edges of a wide-open area.
“When we had the old register layout, you have the sense that there is only a limited amount of space to check out,” said Carl Morris, Manager of the Fayetteville pilot store. “Now when they walk in, it is wide open. Any choice they want and any amount of help they need, we can offer them. In this new layout, you get greeted from the entranceway and helped all the way through the whole process.”
John Crecelius, Senior VP of Walmart US Innovations Development agreed that eliminating traditional lanes improves customer engagement. “By nature, individual lanes make the checkout experience transactional, but being face-to-face, the interaction becomes a relationship,” said Crecelius. “We want to make it a personal experience.”
