When you have a full cart or two, the speedier scanning at a traditional checkout pays off. But usually both are available, not just self checkout, so you're free to choose when that isn't the case.
The big Tesco nearby has a single combined queue for all the 20 or so self-scan checkouts. They are rarely all in service. With a few items it is now always faster to go to an operator checkout unless you go in at 4am. The express lanes of "under 10 items" or "cash only" are a memory of a former, much faster time.
There is often an employee aggressively marshalling people to the self-scan checkouts at every available opportunity and trying to pull them away from the staffed lines.
In the local Pound shop they tried replacing all checkouts with self-scan, getting rid of all others. They had to reverse this a month or two later and put back half a dozen, now brand new, staff operated tills - ripping out a few weeks-old self-scanners to make space. They are again slower thanks to rarely having staff nearby to handle the steady stream of staff authorisations and errors, so there's a big delay every time someone wanders over from the back of the store to wave their bar code and immediately disappear again.
Self-checkout is all about cutting labor hours, period. It is both slower and leads to much higher shrink (as much as 150% more) than a manned casher. Stores hope to make more money by keeping the store open longer. The hacks around the slowness of checkout without cashiers is for people optimizing for time is online ordering or shopping at midnight.
That is exactly the case. If you pay 10$ an hour for 3 shifts 8 hours each, this makes 3x8x10 = $240 a day. That is $7200 in 30 days per one checkout spot. To setup equipment for self-checkout and maintain it order of magnitude cheaper compared to self checkout. Another factor is eliminating managerial overhead while dealing with human beings, as one store manager told me referring to self-checkouts: "They are never sick, they do not have an attitude, they do not quit and they can't be rude to customers".
Self-checkouts trade one kind of unhappiness for another, and many (most?) are horrifying experiences. There are a few that are reasonably quick and user-friendly, but certainly not all. Most seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel in an effort to squeeze a few more $ off the purchase price.
If you scanned less than 20/minute you had about a month to get to 30 before you were either canned or lost hours.
Things might be faster now with the unmanned ones, but the contention is that that’s only because they opened more checkout terminals. Granted, they wouldnt have done that with staffed ones because of the increased expense, but let’s not get confused about the real cause.
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Maybe if you're selling a checkout system. Personally I care how fast I can go from "got things" to "left building". (or maybe more accurately: left home -> returned home, but that has a lot more variables)
It is possible for there to be multiple benefits. In fact this is the most desirable, since when there is an immediate economic benefit to both sides, it is incentivized to happen.
In the case of supermarket self-scanning, sure, the supermarket can reduce costs.
However, the benefit to the customer is in a shorter total time through checkout. Entropy causes customers to arrive at checkouts in spurts, rather than there being a steady flow. It is expensive for stores for checkout operators to remain idle (and would be passed on in higher prices). So customers have to queue instead of there being more checkout operators available during spurts.
On the other hand, the cost of maintaining extra self-checkout machines costs very little. So in practice, they tend to be available to handle spurts of activity, resulting in faster overall checkout times for customers too.
For the stores: yes, reduced costs. For the customers: reduced costs result in lower prices in healthy markets, and also time to traverse checkouts is faster.
The same can be applied to airlines. Fewer staff at the line at the gate results in reduced staffing costs: sure. But also: less standing around in lines and less juggling at the front of the line (especially for the infirm, or those with kids, etc) is also a clear benefit to passengers.
It is cynical to ignore the other half of the benefits and focus just on costs. And in any case, reduced costs for the company results in lower prices for consumers.
If only! At the (UK) Tesco metro near my workplace, the staff have this insane habit of keeping half or fewer of the available self-checkout machines in operation. The rest of them have a big symbol like a stop-sign and are unusable.
Only if a big queue builds up will the single attending staff member go round and laboriously make the other machines available, whilst simultaneously having to attend to the frequent weighing issues caused by the machines. By the time they're done with this the lunchtime rush is practically over.
I mentioned this to a work colleague who suggested the reason is that they want to reduce the amount of time counting cash out of the machines at the end of the day, so having fewer machines in operation is preferable.
Go in really early or late and there are no lines occupied until a customer waits - usually no more than a minute as they appear to have a strong focus on keeping an eye out.
I would say there's a shorter overall wait, and a far higher likelihood of getting out of the store in the shortest overall time than any of the alternatives at the competition.
So no, I haven't seen any of these much-touted speed benefits. Quite the opposite frequently.
Also, where I live we have portable scanners. You pick up a scanner when you enter the store, you scan all your groceries and put them directly in the bag (or under the stroller) and when you reach the exit you leave the scanner and pay at a terminal and off you go.
Also, the self scanners require you to weigh your fruits & vegetables at the f&v section. Although it seems they're adding scales to the self checkout boots lately, so hopefully I can start using the in-store scanning the way I use Anglo-Saxon self-checkout booths soon - just load up in the shop, scan everything yourself at the end.
Every now and then you get audited, but I'll happily pay that price in order to have the scanner.
You don't walk out the supermarket door and have to wait for a hundred people to load their cars and make their way out of the parking lot. Which means that getting you through the checkout faster just means more time waiting to get out of the parking lot.
If there's a cashier with more than one person waiting I will go to the self-scanners.
In actuality supermarket self-scanning is often slower than a traditional checkout queue. Particularly when items require staff authorisation. I expect this to be no better than traditional boarding in most cases.
The real benefit to both this, and supermarket self-scanning, is another low wage employee can be canned. This isn't a very marketing friendly message so it's no surprise that this isn't the message that publicised loudest.