Coresight Research recently partnered with Zebra Technologies and Elo Touch Solutions to conduct a new study on the evolution of self-service technology from being confined to the checkout process to becoming core to the in-store retail experience.

To set the stage, the report’s authors said self-service technology is rapidly becoming a defining feature of the modern in-store retail experience. “Driven by rising labor costs, increasing operational complexity, and growing consumer demand for faster, more personalized interactions, these solutions are expanding beyond isolated use cases to play a central role across the store journey,” they said.

So, it was no surprise that the survey revealed that 80 percent of executives from 150 U.S. retailers participating in the study reported plans to add more self-service to stores over the next 24 months. This is in addition to technologies such as smart carts, mobile scan-and-go and self-ordering kiosks that are already being used to support consumers throughout their entire shopping experience.

The report’s authors said that while there are significant operational and financial benefits to retailers that are implementing these technologies, the industry is still in the very early days in terms of widespread scaling of most of these technologies. Only 23 percent of retailers surveyed said they have fully rolled out self-service across all of their stores.

In addition to the transactional benefit of using self-service solutions, retailers are seeing many operational and financial benefits to their business.

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