Almost every Thursday morning, before I start work, I visit the town market to buy food. After that, I do the weekly supermarket shop. Most people can understand me shopping locally and supporting the market. The question I’m sometimes asked is why I don’t do the supermarket shop online? It’s partly because I’ve learned that the store is well-stocked on a Thursday morning and I can do the weekly shop in 20-30 minutes. There’s also an element of dissatisfaction with previous online supermarket shopping experiences.

I mostly shop at Sainsbury’s. There are some items that we get from Lidl in the next town (though there’s an Aldi locally now, so that may change) and I have to go to Tesco or Waitrose for some other items because the local Sainsbury’s is too small. I also use Costco. Basically, I know what I can get where, at what price/quality.

“SmartShop”

In Sainsbury’s, I use the SmartShop self-scanning technology. According to the Sainsbury’s website:

“SmartShop is the new way to shop at Sainsbury’s. Just scan, bag and go, it couldn’t be easier!”

I started to use this a few years ago, when Sainsbury’s ran a campaign to encourage its use. Then, just a few weeks ago, some tills were removed in our local store to enlarge the self-checkout area. I’ve also switched from using the app on my phone to an in-store handset as I found the barcode scanning to be more efficient.

Random checks

A few months ago, almost every shop was being selected for a “random” check. Sainsbury’s explains that:

“Sometimes customers can double scan an item by mistake, or an item might end up in your trolley that hasn’t been scanned properly. So from time to time we might ask you to have your shopping re-scanned by one of our colleagues.

These rescans are random and they’ll only happen at checkout.”

These were annoying (as it was a regular occurrence), but understandable, until one time the entire shop had to be re-scanned. One of the advantages of self-scanning is that you can carefully place your items in bags so they are not damaged. I watched as my items were re-scanned and roughly repacked for me. I took a deep breath and walked away.

I understand why stores do this. Shoplifting is a huge issue nationally, thought more of a problem in some stores than others. But this policy on self-scans is effectively saying “we think you might be stealing from us”. There’s no apology when no theft is found.

There is an argument that self-scan is also a cost saving measure for supermarkets. That needs to be weighed up against the shrinkage and the customer experience. Some stores simply won’t install self-scan in certain areas, because of the risk.

The “random” checks stopped for a while but today, I was selected again. It’s fair to say that I did not respond well. In fact, I was enraged. 12 September is not a great day for me (it would have been my late Father’s birthday) but I honestly don’t know if that was a factor in my anger when a full re-scan was required. I insisted on speaking to a manager – I don’t believe the scans are random and I’m sure there’s some pattern recognition on my shopping habits via my Nectar card. The last couple of weeks’ shopping was small (with one teenager away from home). This week I spent more, including alcohol, and it felt like I was being singled out.

Pricing errors

The irony is that, after the store re-scanned all my shopping, I found mistakes in their pricing! Far from me adding to Sainsbury’s shrinkage bill, they were not passing on advertised savings to customers.

Readers will probably be familiar with the concept of discounts for loyalty card holders. Tesco has Clubcard, Sainsbury’s has Nectar, other retailers have their own schemes too. These are controversial for some, but I’m comfortable accepting that I trade my data for cash. After all, I give data about my habits away all the time on the Internet, using “free” services (if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product).

I found that Sainsbury’s had not passed on a Nectar discount on one of my items. Furthermore, because the ePOS system was not configured with the correct price, it would presumably have been overcharging every customer who bought that item and used their Nectar card.

Then, later in the day, I spotted that some of the personalised Nectar offers from a SmartShop scan were not passed to me when I’d had the full shop scanned through a normal till. Those offers were actually a reason for me to buy multiple items, rather than just one. They had increased the volume of the sale, but I’d ended up paying the full price.

Both of these mistakes were corrected by staff but they shouldn’t have happened.

In summary, when Sainsbury’s systems suspected I might have been shoplifting, it actually turned out that they owed me money.

Teenage kicks

I started my working life in retail. As a teenager, I worked for Bejam (now Iceland), and then a few years at Safeway. It was mostly stacking shelves but also warehouse work and checkouts when the store was busy. I saw the change from manual pricing to ePOS with barcodes, and I worked on a number of store openings and refits. After I decided to go to Polytechnic instead of joining Safeway’s management programme, I came back in my holidays and worked night shifts. That period of my life taught me quite a lot about supermarket retail and, fundamentally, not much has changed since. Of course, there have been some developments – like just-in-time deliveries replacing in-store warehouse space and the creation of digital services such as online shopping and self-scan.

One thing that does seem to have changed though is the checks on price labels. At Safeway in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it was a full-time job to check every price in store and manage changes/promotions. If the shelf edge labels didn’t match the computer then the customers were charged the wrong price. That was taken seriously back then.

This attention to detail seems to be gone. I imagine it was a cost-cutting efficiency (as is self-service). Nowadays, I regularly spot pricing errors in Sainsbury’s and it usually leads to store staff removing errant shelf edge tags. And Sainsbury’s are not alone – the local Co-op and OneStop stores seem to have similar issues.

Electronic shelf labelling

So, why don’t UK supermarkets use electronic shelf labels (ESLs), like those seen in continental Europe? I did some basic analysis and it seems that early trials were inconclusive, with concerns around cost, technology and operational challenges. So, just like any IT system really.

On the other hand, the benefits include efficiency, dynamic pricing, customer information and sustainability. The Grocer reported in 2021 that ESLs were making a comeback but I’ve not seen much evidence to suggest it’s happening quickly.

So what might ESLs cost for a store like the one where I shop, which was only built 5 years ago?

My local Sainsbury’s store cost £3.3m to build and is 1610 square metres in size. A few prompts to an AI assistant has told me that:

• A store this size can be expected to stock 20-25,000 product lines.
• The cost of ESLs can vary depending on the brand and features but an investment for 10,000 lines would be around £50-80,000.

So, about £125-200,000 for a store this size (between 3.7 and 6% of the £3.3m budget) to have accurate pricing in store.

No business case?

The thing is, that, in addition to my teenage shelf-stacking, I have some IT experience of working in retail. When I was at Polo Ralph Lauren in the early 2000s it was a lot easier to justify application spend than infrastructure. If IT spend doesn’t add to the bottom line, then the business case is unlikely to be approved. And if stores make more money from advertising offers that are not applied, why would they invest in a system to display accurate pricing?

Call me a cynic, but could that be the real reason why UK stores haven’t invested in electronic ticketing?

Featured image: author’s own.