3. Self Checkouts in Wine Section with Facial Recognition
Pain Point: Through our interviews, we identified the long checkout lines at Sam’s Club. The Director of Innovation also mentioned this during one of our in-store visits.
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“I guess one of the first things I see when I walk into Sam’s Club would be how long the checkout lines are to see how busy the store is and how long I am going to be waiting.” Interviewee, Halle G.
Insights: How Might We reduce the waiting time in checkout lines for members that shop exclusively for wine?
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Long waiting lines from the entrance discourage people to shop. source
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“Greater than 60% of us don't know what we'll buy before entering the store. And another 20% of us change our minds in the wine aisle.” - Jeff Campbell from Tastry
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After performing an in-store visit to run through the customer journey, a regular person would have to take out three separate cards to make an alcohol purchase: a member card, an ID card, and a payment card. source
Solution: Placing a Self-checkout box in the wine section with facial recognition.
Placing a self-checkout register in the wine section for people who only come in to purchase wine. The register would have facial recognition to recognize members and sign them into their account to avoid having to take out their member card, ID card, and payment card. Similar facial recognition software is already being used in China. source
The checkout box screen would also serve as a kiosk that would use a short survey of questions to recommend the best possible wines according to their tastes.
Who, What, Wow:
Customers who want to make a quick wine purchase without walking through the entire store can go to the Sam’s Club wine self checkout and reduce their time by 7 minutes. source
This storyboard showcases the process:
You are running short on time and you see the checkout lines are long.
You skip the line with the self checkout kiosk.
You saved 7 minutes in the checkout line!
Results:
When ranking the ideas with my team, this idea did not pass through to be presented to the presented to the Director of Innovation so I analyzed it with the use of the 6 thinking hats.
Quick overview
Yellow Hat: There is a need for quicker purchases when only shopping for wine.
Black Hat: Sam’s club already has a quick checkout option called Scan n Go.
Green Hat: If there is no space for an extra checkout box, then the facial recognition software could be implemented into the regular self-checkout registers.