Last year, the company that also makes ATMs, self-service checkout machines, and airport check-in kiosks launched a program that merges its software with the iPad. This allows store clerks to detach the iPad from the keyboard at the counter and use it as a mobile checkout device
“Retailers have more flexibility and more opportunities to change the shopping experience,” said Mark Self, NCR’s vice president of retail solutions marketing.
Stores themselves also are taking their cues from the success of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). The nation’s most profitable retailer moved to mobile checkout in all of its stores in 2007. In 2011, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) began allowing shoppers to check out their purchases using their iPhones.
Take upscale handbag maker Coach, Inc. (NYSE:COH), which is using iPod Touch devices at half of its 189 factory outlet stores. The company also is testing them in a handful of its 350 regular stores.
The move has enabled Coach to start slimming down its registers to the size of small podiums, freeing up space on walls to build shelves to showcase more product, said Francine Della Badia, Coach’s executive vice president of merchandising.
Della Badia, who says the additional space will be used for new shoe salons and other purposes, said most importantly, the mobile devices allow store staff to build “a more intimate connection with the customer.”
Some retailers have decided to go completely mobile. Urban Outfitters, which operates more than 400 stores under its namesake brand, Anthropologie and Free People, announced in late September that all sales eventually will be rung up on iPods and iPads on swivels located at counters. The company didn’t give a timeframe for when it would go completely mobile.
Urban Outfitters had given iPod Touch devices to its sales staff two years ago and the move has been very well received by shoppers, said Calvin Hollinger, the company’s chief information officer in his address to investors.
Nordstrom, Inc. (NYSE:JWN), an upscale department-store chain that’s considered within the retail industry to be the gold standard in customer service, also plans to get rid of registers altogether.
The company handed out iPod Touch devices to its staff at its 117 department stores nationwide in 2011. And by late last year, it did the same for its 110 Nordstrom Rack stores that sell lower-priced merchandise. Nordstrom, which already has removed some of the registers at its Rack stores, said it aims to phase out registers by next year.
Colin Johnson, a Nordstrom spokeswoman, said it’s too early to draw any conclusions on how mobile checkout has influenced buying, but the company is learning about which technologies work best.
“We see the future as essentially mobile,” Johnson said. “We don’t see departments in our store as being defined by a big clunky cash register.”
Not every retailer is quick to ditch registers, though. After all, there are still logistics to figure out. For instance, most retailers don’t accept cash payments on mobile devices. But if they start to do so, where will they put the cash that would normally go into a register?
Additionally, sales staff walking around stores armed with mobile devices could turn off shoppers who would prefer to be left alone in aisles. Richard Robins, a 67-year-old semi-retired investment fund manager from Redonda Beach, Calif., says he would like the convenience of mobile checkout but wouldn’t want to be pressured from a sales clerk while he’s in the aisle.
“I don’t want to be hustled,” he said.
To guard against making customers uncomfortable, some retailers including Penney are training their salespeople on when to approach shoppers — and when not to. For its part, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is putting checkout in the hands of the shoppers themselves.
The retailer is testing its “Scan & Go” app, which can be used on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) devices such as iPads, in more than 200 of its more than 4,000 stores nationwide.
The app, which is aimed at reducing long checkout lines, requires that shoppers pay at self-checkout areas. So as it tests the app, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) also is expanding the number of self-checkout areas in its stores.
“Our goal is to give choices to all of our customers however they want to shop,” said Gibu Thomas, senior vice president of mobile and digital initiatives at Wal-Mart’s global e-commerce division.
The article Is The Cash Register Ringing Its Last Sale? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Associated Press.
The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Coach. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Coach.
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