Self-checkout is alienating shoppers, new research finds

• Self-checkout might be making customers less loyal to stores that use it, according to new research.
• Researchers at Drexel University found that customers expect service, including human checkout, while shopping.

Self-checkout might make shoppers feel less loyal to a store, according to new research.

Retailers, including Kroger and Costco, have turned to the tech over the last couple of decades. But customers don't like bagging their own groceries or the other tasks of ringing up their own purchases, surveys of shoppers conducted at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business found.

Customers are more likely to return to stores where they used a human-staffed checkout, versus stores where they used a self-checkout, according to the researchers, Yanliu Huang and Farhana Nusrat.

"Our findings indicate that self-checkout systems, despite their advantages in terms of speed, ease of use, and cost reduction, can result in lower customer loyalty compared to regular checkout systems, especially when the number of purchased items is relatively high (e.g., more than 15 items)," Huang, a professor at LeBow, said in a press release.

Customers were more likely to come back to a store when they used traditional checkout, the researchers say, because of the easier process and a "sense of entitlement" to good service while shopping.

Nusrat worked with Huang as a graduate student at Drexel. She's now a professor at the University of San Diego.

Huang and Nusrat conducted five studies as part of the research. One asked shoppers about their recent grocery-buying habits, including whether they used a self-checkout kiosk or were rung up by a human employee. Three others asked customers about hypothetical shopping situations, including ones where the number of items they purchased varied.

A fifth study pointed to a finding that could be instructive for retailers. In it, some shoppers read a short passage about how doing something themselves is rewarding before paying for groceries using self-checkout.

"We found that when customers were encouraged to think of the extra effort involved in self-checkout as a rewarding experience, their perceived loyalty to the store was similar to those of regular checkout shoppers," Huang said.

Self-checkout has faced a reckoning at some retailers lately. Recent data found that self-checkout kiosks are contributing to retailers' theft problems, with shoppers either intentionally using the unmanned kiosks to get items for free or accidentally walking away with merchandise that didn't ring up correctly.

But technology aimed at catching shoplifters using self-checkout has caused confrontations between Walmart employees and innocent customers, Business Insider reported.

In some cases, retailers are actually removing self-checkout kiosks from stores. Walmart pulled self-checkout from three stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico last year, BI reported last year.

Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said in December that the chain wanted to improve customer service after it "started to rely too much this year on self-checkout in our stores."

Do you work at a store with self-checkout and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com