The media reports that Sam’s Club is currently preparing to launch its first store without checkout lanes.
According to information released by journalists on Monday, October 7, the opening of the mentioned store is scheduled for the middle of the current month. The media also reported that this Sam’s Club trade chain facility will be located in Texas. Moreover, it is currently tentatively known that visitors to the new store will have to use the app Scan & Go to ring up items on their smartphones while shopping.
For many years, standard practice has been that cash registers should be installed in stores. The Walmart-owned club retailer decided to take a fundamentally different approach. The company will display products that are only available online. In this case, it means, for example, giant Christmas trees and diamonds. Under this concept, workers will have about four times more space to ready e-commerce orders, which can be picked up at the curbside and delivered to homes.
The media notes that Sam’s Club has become a more technologically savvy unit of Walmart, launching innovations that are now used by the parent company. In this case, it means, for example, Scan & Go.
Also, in the current year, Sam’s Club began using artificial intelligence-based checkout technology in its stores. In this case, the company’s functional system, using a combination of AI, computer vision, and digital technologies, identifies what is in the shopping cart and confirms that customers have paid for their items. As part of the relevant decision, workers should not check the purchases of visitors before leaving the store.
According to media reports, referring to Sam’s Club chief executive officer Chris Nicholas, the new store in Texas will become a kind of testing ground for even more technologies. According to the head of the company, the goal is 100% digital engagement as a business.
It is worth noting that the practice of not using cash registers has already been implemented in some locations of the McDonald’s network. It is possible that over time, the appropriate approach will become widespread and will be something that meets such a definition as a standard solution.
As we have reported earlier, Amazon’s Whole Foods Plans to Open New Small-Format Stores.
Serhii Mikhailov
Serhii’s track record of study and work spans six years at the Faculty of Philology and eight years in the media, during which he has developed a deep understanding of various aspects of the industry and honed his writing skills; his areas of expertise include fintech, payments, cryptocurrency, and financial services, and he is constantly keeping a close eye on the latest developments and innovations in these fields, as he believes that they will have a significant impact on the future direction of the economy as a whole.
