"When checkout is working really well, it will feel like stealing."

Original post:  May 29, 2014

I work with the UDI program. Much of it revolves around bar codes; they were invented to help speed checkout lines for retail outlets. According to this article in the National Retail Federation, "Brave New World", there is a potential future for retail that doesn't involve bar codes! Michael Chui, a partner with McKinsey explains:

“People have said when checkout is working really well, it will feel like stealing,” Chui says. “You grab a pair of shoes and you just walk out.”

Through a population of sensor technologies placed strategically within stores, retailers will recognize customers when they walk in the door through smart devices or other means, Chui says. Stores will have payment cards on file; customers will be billed when they leave the store with the merchandise, essentially bypassing the checkout.

“That could create a really interesting way to improve the customer experience,” says Chui.

With a new "Internet of Things" (IoT) allowing for devices to connect to each other, it may be possible to link devices together in the store. Gartner estimates an explosion in this market that will eventually top $200 billion by 2020.

The increasingly low cost of processors in sensors will afford the ability to connect “just about anything,” Gartner reports, “from the very simple to the very complex, to offer remote control, monitoring and sensing.” 

As IoT technology deploys, retail stores will become more intelligent locales in connecting physical objects in the stores with digital processes, but largely in a favorable, behind-the-scenes manner, Dorf says. Through analytic data gleaned from IoT sensors, the intelligent store will give store managers greater insight into how shoppers and store associates interact with products and where resources need to be deployed to enhance the shopping experience.

“The Internet of Things is really meant to be pretty unobtrusive,” he says. “It’s one of those things where retailers will have lots of sensors in their stores, but you won’t know [about] them unless you go looking for them.”

This leads to the "holy grail" of the completely connected supply chain, according to Ajith Sankaran with Blueocean:

With seamless, real-time gathering of data in the physical store — similar to how brands and retailers gather data via electronic commerce — inventory and supply chain functions like SKU management and optimization promise to be among the biggest beneficiaries of IoT in retail, Sankaran says. In many respects, retailers are moving more quickly in back-office operations with IoT deployment than they are on the sales floor.

“The use of sensors and RFID tags on products enables real-time monitoring as the products move through the supply chain,” he says. “This can integrate backward to the supplier systems, enabling them to send stocks at the optimum time. At the retailer’s warehouse and stores, sensors can be deployed at product level and at aisle and shelf levels to enable higher efficiencies in restocking, automating order fulfillment and stock management.”

  

Here is another link to the full article:  https://nrf.com/news/retail-trends/brave-new-world