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From paper to electronic and in-person to automated, our world has been and is constantly evolving. But are these changes heading in the wrong or right direction?

Consumer technology was developed in the 1990s. During this period, the internet was introduced, Google became a platform and online shopping began soon after that. Shopping online allowed consumers to buy products and have them delivered without leaving their homes. 

Now, we have a variety of other advances. These developments include delivery services, free shipping, payment applications, self-checkout stations, self-ordering machines and the newest elevation, getting rid of the checkout process altogether.  

The rise in consumer technology is shifting personal interactions that people used to have daily when shopping at local grocery stores, convenience stores and retail stores. Since the rise in online shopping, many department stores have gone bankrupt, and there’s plenty of debate on whether or not these advances are taking away jobs within the service field. 

According to an article titled “Looking Back On 40 Years of Retail – Top Tips for the Future” by Ipsos Retail Performance, “Online shopping is now the norm and successful retailers knew they must adopt an omnichannel approach if they were to stay competitive. This included websites and apps, as well as traditional store formats. Some firms, however, struggled to keep pace with the digital revolution and suffered as a result.” 

Sears, K-Mart and Younkers are all victims of these modern technological advances and have since closed their doors as a consequence. 

Maria Meza, a mother of four said: “I would buy everything online if I could actually. I just love the convenience of being in my own home, especially in the wintertime.” 

Self-checkout machines have become fixtures in the present shopping experience. These machines promise to accomplish fast and easy transactions, making the buying process more convenient for customers. 

According to the Food Marketing Institute, shoppers go grocery shopping about 1.6 times per week rather than once every two weeks. This change in behavior results in fewer items at checkout, which makes self-checkouts convenient. Social trends also grasp onto notions that allow more control and less human interaction.

In an article titled “The Economics of Self-Service Checkouts,” written by research fellow Paula Dootson and associate professor Gary Mortimer, “A survey of multiple countries found 90% of respondents had used self-checkouts, with Australia and Italy leading the way.” 

With the increasing use of self-service machines, there has been a lot of talk about job decline. Dootson and Mortimer said in their article, “Employment in the Australian supermarket and grocery industry went down for the first time in 2015-16 and is projected to remain flat for a few years.

But staff numbers are projected to rebound again, in part due to the need to curtail growing theft at self-checkouts.” 

A CNBC analysis found that retail has lost more than 140,000 jobs since January 2017 and is still declining despite strong growth in nearly every other sector and a historically low unemployment rate. Losses include 11,000 retail jobs in March of 2019 alone, per the U.S. Department of Labor. Meanwhile, health care added 49,000 jobs in March and 398,000 over the past 12 months. 

Restaurants have also hopped onto the trend of self service checkouts. 

Ally Conlin, a server at Hy-Vee Market Grille, said, “Ziosks at restaurants are definitely an improvement because as someone who works in the service industry, servers and bartenders get very busy. And if people are willing to use them, we should take advantage of that.” 

Meza has a similar opinion toward the self-pay machines at restaurants, noting that using a self-pay station is convenient if the restaurant is busy and your server doesn’t have the time to take your money when you are ready to go.  

U.S. restaurants have followed the self-checkout trend but have not yet made as many changes as restaurants in Japan. Kaylin Sayeed, a Grand View student, said that he hates the fact that restaurants have moved toward using self-pay machines at the table. Japan ruined this concept for him because there were no servers in the restaurants he went to. Sayeed said that he had to order everything on a tablet and do the work of a server that could have been accomplished with the simple question of “what would you like to eat?”

New headway brings about behavioral changes within customers who interact with them. According to a Harvard Business Review article by Gretchen Gavett, a study found that, “When a liquor store changed from face-to-face to self-service, the market share of difficult to pronounce items increased by 8.4%.” 

The researchers concluded that consumers might fear being misunderstood or appearing unsophisticated in front of the clerks. Changing to self-service removed social friction. This same result goes for food service as well. 

Gavett said they also looked into a pizza chain that introduced online ordering. The customers who were ordering online ordered food with 3% more calories and also gave 14% more special instructions compared with the average purchase over the phone. They concluded that customers’ desire to avoid the negative judgment of their eating habits drove the change. Customers seem to fulfill more of their wants when there is less in-person interaction. Social anxieties diminish when customers are put in front of a screen without human judgment to stand in the way. 

Not only have new advances in consumerism changed the physical act of checking out, but they have also changed the way customers pay. 

Apps such as Venmo and Apple Pay have come into play. Instead of sending money through the mail or physically going to the bank to take money out, people pay on their phones.

Conlin said, “I like Venmo because it is an easy alternative for not always having cash. My roommates would use it to send money for rent, utilities and more.” 

The biggest flourish yet is a new grocery store created by Amazon called Amazon Go. Amazon has created a way of shopping without having to go through a checkout line. When entering the store, customers just scan their Amazon app, grab what they need and then walk out. The bill immediately gets charged to a virtual card; it’s that simple. This grocery store has locations in places such as Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and New York City and has 17 locations total. 

According to Amazon Go’s promotional video, the company uses computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion to accomplish a checkout-less store. The technological concepts used throughout the store are much like you would find in self-driving cars. This approach in technology is something we have never seen before.

But where is technology going? 

In an article titled “10 Tech Advances That Could Have Significant Impact On Consumer Businesses,” Forbes Technology Council said, “Facial recognition and location services will provide a seamless connection between our online accounts and our offline experiences. No matter where we are browsing or shopping, we will receive personalized recommendations and experiences that result in a more efficient and enjoyable purchasing journey.” 

Facial recognition is beginning to successfully emerge on our cellular devices, which brings forth new ideas to use it for other daily interactions. Shawn Estes, who works for Global Agora, said, “Voice will dominate consumer markets in the next five years. As the technology becomes cheaper, a voice assistant will be accessible in every room. If you run out of toothpaste, you’ll ask Alexa to reorder it from the bathroom sink.” 

Instead of going to the store, new technology would replace the items needed. Another theory of development from Jane Ren, who works for Atomiton, Inc., said in an article posted by Forbes Technology Council, “Today, AI is infiltrating smartphones (Siri), cars (auto-pilot) and homes (Alexa). Soon it will be embedded in every gadget we buy, from trash cans, to jewelry to home theaters, transforming how we interact with them. The value of a consumer product has shifted from “hardware” to experience, thanks to the cloud. Now with AI, it will be the personalized experience that matters.” 

Is the constant need for technological development going too far? 

“It definitely brings positive effects; everything has its disadvantages, but I feel like it brings more good than bad,” Sayeed said.