Examining Customers’ Anxiety with Auto-Checkout Scanners
F
rom 2001: A Space Odyssey
to The Matrix, it’s a plot line that has made many a Hollywood movie: too-bigfor-their-britches computers intimidating humans and taking over the world. But while these battles for control have so far remained on the big screen, the anxieties they depict are not far from reality—just ask a grandmother who’s been pressured into creating a Facebook page. According to new research by Michael Capella, assistant professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business, evidence of this anxiety also can be witnessed in the automated check-out aisles of the neighborhood grocery store. Capella’s report, “The Impact of Social Presence on Technology-Based Self-Service Use: The Role of Familiarity,” which was co-authored by professors Brian Kinard of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and Jerry Kinard of Western Carolina University, was published in the summer
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issue of Services Marketing Quarterly. The study, the first of its kind, examined consumer attitudes about using technologybased self-services in grocery stores. The growth of self-service scanners at stores, airports, hotels, and even libraries is increasing exponentially. According to statistics produced by the IHL Group, transactions at North American self-service kiosks surpassed $607 billion in 2008 and, by 2012, is expected to top $1.7 trillion. Until now, little has been known about consumer anxiety surrounding these new technologies. Capella and his team, partnering with Kroger grocery stores in Mississippi, manipulated the shopping environment of 119 participants by controlling the number of shoppers simultaneously using the technology. Some of the participants were observed while using the self-service scanner alone. Others used the technology while one, two, or three staged shoppers used nearby scanners at the same time.
After completing use of the automated self-scanners, the study subjects were asked if they were likely to use a self-checkout lane again and whether they would recommend it to others. They also were asked if they felt confident or pressured about using the technology and if they felt a sense of accomplishment. “Our hypothesis was that with more people using adjacent terminals, the less comfortable the [study subjects] would be,” Capella says. “But we found they were least comfortable in the presence of just one additional person, while with three others it went back to being as though nobody else was there.” Capella and his team discovered that when participant shoppers had one shopper nearby, their emotional reaction to the scanner tended toward “stage fright”—a fear of being inept at operating the machine in the presence of another person, who might notice them making a mistake. Because the possibility of being observed making a mistake was lower when two or more shoppers used the scanners simultaneously, participant shoppers’ anxiety about the new technology decreased. These findings, says Capella, suggest that merchants should install self check-out machines in high-traffic areas—more shoppers equals less anxiety. In addition, manufacturers also need to improve usability by making the shopper-machine interface more user-friendly. Capella believes that creative advertising might ease the anxieties his study revealed. For example, an ad might portray a tech-savvy consumer helping a selfconscious fellow shopper master the use of the self-service check-out station. “Even though they likely feel some trepidation, especially with another customer present, the shopper can use this technology to make the check-out experience more pleasant,” Capella says. “Technology can and should be a tool we use to take control of our world—not the other way around.”
illustration: Jing Jing Tsong
faculty Research
