It’s not just the age of the shopper that’s changing

There is a lot of discussion about the new generation of shoppers, particularly the millennials who expect their in-store shopping experience to be comparable to their on-line experience.  The findings of FMI’s recently released ‘US Grocery Shopper Trends 2017’[1] further supports this trend and provides some additional insight.  The most significant of these insights is the comfort level millennials appear to have gained in just the past year shopping for groceries on-line.  In 2017, 43 percent of millennials said they shop for groceries on-line; that is compared to 28 percent in 2016.

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Irisys congratulates Morrisons for beating fellow grocers like Aldi and Lidl to earn the "Supermarket of the Year" distinction at Britain’s Retail Industry Awards, which highlights the best performing retailers in the past year.

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The concept of customers serving themselves is not new. The first bank ATM was installed as far back as 1967 in Enfield, North London, while deposit-only machines date back to the 30’s. You can now go on holiday without talking to anyone! Book over the internet, check-in online or at a kiosk, drop your bags off and head for security and the shops. Over time more and more daily tasks have been transformed to ‘self-service’. The retail environment was slow to catch-on, but is now making up for lost time. Most large retailers now offer self-service checkouts. Some offer ‘scan as you shop’ using hand scanners or even your own smartphone. Petrol forecourts now offer ‘pay at pump’ service.

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There have been multiple studies comparing the efficiency of a using a single line (think of a bank queue) versus multiple lines (think of most grocery stores) for checkout. Simulations tend to make a variety of assumptions, such as cashier speed and arrival rates, and indicate a single queue is faster and more effectively utilizes the cashiers.  

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If there’s one thing that seriously impacts on the bottom line for retailers it’s staff scheduling. Too many staff can be a waste of resources and customers can feel overwhelmed and pursued.

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There have been many warnings recently about the “death” of the British high street, as store visits fall, shops close and many retailers experience a drop in sales.

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If recent reports are to be believed, the high street has just 12 years left in terms of its survival. According to a ParcelHero Industry Report around half of the UK’s shop premises will disappear between 2020 and 2030. The cause? This is widely thought to be ecommerce, which the ParcelHero report says will be responsible for 40% of all UK retail sales by the year 2030. So, are all bricks and mortar stores doomed? No, not at all. What the ParcelHero report actually does is to highlight the need for retail stores to ramp up operational performance to compete more effectively.

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According to a study of digital industry strategies by Forrester Consulting, less than a third of retailers consider themselves able to achieve operational efficiency. This is despite the fact that a majority of retailers feel that operational efficiency is a factor of critical or high importance when it comes to business success. 

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NORTHAMPTON, England and ATLANTA (4 January, 2018) – Morrisons, one of the largest supermarkets in the United Kingdom, is investing in its stores with the recent estate-wide upgrade of Irisys’ Queue Intelligence™ analytics solution.

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In part 1 of ‘Calculating the benefits of a queue management system’, we briefly discussed the three most common financial benefits of implementing a queue management system – labor savings, sales increase, cost avoidance. This article further explores ways the Irisys system can help optimize the use of cashier labor and provides a few examples of how our customers have used to the system to do
just that.

The fight for entry-level labor

When profit margins are high and sales are good, efficiency isn’t always top of mind.
Right now, traditional grocery stores are facing several challenges that are impacting
their sales and profitability – price deflation, the aggressive growth of discount
grocers (such as Lidl) and the push in most states to raise minimum starting wages, to
name a few. In 2016, three of the top 10 food retailers in the U.S. –Walmart, Costco
and Target - raised their minimum starting wage. Because traditional grocery stores
hire from the same pool of entry-levelworkers, they are competing for these workers.
With US supermarket profit margins between 1-2%, it is difficult for them to compete
on the wage front. Irisys has worked with grocers that are unable to fill cashier
openings with any workers – not to mention quality ones – due to wage competition.
For grocers whose union cashiers are required to pay dues, the competition is even
greater. As labor becomes a larger percentage of operating costs, it becomes
increasingly important that it be used efficiently to help deliver great customer service and drive sales.

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