Self-Checkout suppliers realized over $524 million in revenue during calendar year 2010, with the market expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.9% over the next five years.
Regional adoption of this self-service technology was fairly inconsistent in 2010, however, as the value derived from solution installation varied significantly across the Americas, EMEA and APAC.
1. Hardware vendors benefited greatly from self-checkout deployments with their existing client base in North America and Europe (resulting from ongoing refresh cycles or new store openings) as retailers continued to experience returns that justified continued investment in these solutions.
2. Adoption in APAC and other emerging country markets in Latin America has, however, been relatively stunted especially as low labor costs in these regions negates the primary value proposition offered by these expensive self-checkout solutions.
Suppliers are working towards driving investment in historically untapped regions and retail market segments by innovating across a variety of fronts:
- Reducing the footprint of these solutions to enable retailers to accommodate multiple self-checkout lanes in place of their conventional, assisted-service counterparts. This helps maximize use of retail floor space and expedite customer throughput while also resulting in significant labor savings.
- Focusing on the entire self-checkout process (as opposed to the technology hardware alone) and breaking it down into distinct modules – Scanning, Bagging and Payment. Modularity is a raging theme across this space.
- Suppliers are working with retailers to determine the ROI associated with deploying Cash Recycling modules at the self-checkout lane. Automating the cash handling process provides higher level of cash transparency to retailers while also significantly enhancing security and lowering shrinkage.