One of the annoying points of customer experience friction at Sam’s Club, Costco, and some other warehouse stores is waiting for a store employee to check your cart after you have paid and before you exit the store. Soon, according to Megan Crozier, Chief Merchant at Sam’s Club, you’ll now be able to head directly for the exit after payment.
It’s not because Sam’s trusts you more now. Rather, they are replacing the human staffers who compare your receipt to your cart contents with AI and computer vision technology in conjunction with Scan & Go checkout.
Why Do Sam’s Club and Costco Check Your Cart?
The companies explain that the last-minute roadblock is all about keeping customers happy. According to Kaitlin Clark at Simplemost, Costco says they do it to ensure the accuracy of their inventory and to be sure the cashier made no errors.
Sam’s Club puts an even more optimistic spin on the process, Clark says. Sam’s explains that the cart check is an “opportunity for the customer to speak to an employee before leaving in case they had any issues they need resolved.” The company doubles-down on how much customers enjoy the experience, noting that the receipt check enables “exit greeters” to ensure that the customer’s “delightful experience” was “met with an additional touchpoint.”
Personally, I’ve never observed that customers were filled with delight as they waited in line for a store employee to root through their cart checking items against their receipt. More often, they seem impatient and annoyed.
Trust, Mistrust and Shopper Psychology
From a shopper psychology standpoint, the inconvenience of an extra stop at the exit is only part of the problem. Checking people’s carts, often immediately after a store employee has rung up the items in the cart, signifies a lack of trust. The store wants to be sure you didn’t slip in an expensive piece of electronics gear or bottle of fine wine on the way to the exit.
It’s not that theft isn’t a concern. Warehouse clubs do have expensive merchandise that’s easily accessible throughout the store. And, particularly in situations where customers can use self-checkout or Scan & Go technology, slipping in an extra item or two would be easy.
The problem is that trust is reciprocal.
If I show I trust you, you are more likely to trust me. When a store sees the need to interrupt your path to the exit and check your cart for contraband, they are showing they don’t trust you. That makes you a little less likely to trust the store.
Amazon Trusts You
Some retailers go out of their way to build trust. Amazon, for example, has a very forgiving and easy return policy. Your motives and veracity are never questioned. Amazon will usually refund you as soon as you drop a return item off at UPS or another return location. They can’t be sure you are returning the actual item you paid for. You might have damaged it, or you might be returning a box of rocks. But, they trust you and you get the instant refund. You, in turn, trust them and shop at Amazon with confidence.
Trading Friction: Sam’s Club vs. Costco
Replacing the manual cart checks with unobtrusive scanning technology could be a plus for Sam’s. It eliminates one of the less delightful parts of the store’s customer experience, and if the automated check is subtle enough it will also avoid sending the “we don’t trust you” message.
On the other hand, Sam’s Club seems to be pushing customers to self checkout and use of Scan & Go. The latter essentially eliminates the checkout process but forces the customer to use their phone to scan items as they shop. Some customers seem to enjoy it, but others avoid it. I overheard one retail executive say that people only start scanning the items in their cart when they see a long line at the human cashier lanes.
With both self checkout and Scan & Go, the customer is doing work previously done for them by store employees. If you believe that an effortless experience drives customer loyalty, this extra effort isn’t a good thing for the brand.
Costco, in contrast to Sam’s Club, still seems to have plenty of checkouts staffed by humans who will ring items up and even organize them in your shopping cart. This is a significantly less effortful experience if a shopper has more than a few items.
Costco shoppers may find that the brief stop at the exit for a cart check is a fair tradeoff for not scanning their own purchases.