It’s a common sight at many retail stores: a queue of people, waiting to use a self-checkout kiosk, doing their best to remain patient as a lone store worker attends to multiple malfunctioning machines. The frustration mounts while a dozen darkened, roped-off and cashier-less tills sit in the background.

But is it really?

In a 2021 survey of 1,000 American shoppers, 60% of consumers said they prefer to use self-checkout over a staffed checkout aisle when given the choice, yet 67% of consumers have had the technology fail while trying to use it.

So this data is already 3 years old? Also, what percentage of consumers have had other tech failures while trying to checkout with a human? I don’t know how many times I’ve had credit card readers not work for a variety of reasons…

However ubiquitous the technology is, and however much consumers get used to using the kiosks, shoppers are likely to find themselves disappointed and frustrated most of the time.

Most of the time? And this is backed up with…what?

This “article” cites a lot of “expert” opinions without much data to corroborate.