Dominick Reuter/Insider
- Walmart Supercenters in St. Louis, Missouri, and Cleveland, Ohio, are removing self-checkout.
- The change follows a similar move last year at three locations in New Mexico.
- Major retailers have taken other steps to address some of the problems raised by self-service tech.
A pair of Walmarts — one in Missouri and one in Oho — are ditching self-checkout lanes in an effort to improve the in-store experience.
The company confirmed the decisions to Business Insider in a statement, saying the changeover processes at the Cleveland Steelyard location and a St. Louis-area Supercenter take place after hours and will be completed in about two weeks.
Spokesperson Brian Little said the decision was based on feedback from employees and customers, as well as local shopping patterns.
"We believe the change will improve the in-store shopping experience and give our associates the chance to provide more personalized and efficient service," he said.
If the news sounds familiar, that's because three Walmart stores in New Mexico did the same thing last year.
Meanwhile, discount stores Dollar General and FiveBelow have each said they will scale back or eliminate self-checkout from their stores as those retailers grapple with high rates of missing inventory.
Walmart has over 4,700 US locations, and the company said at the time there was no plan to remove self-service kiosks from stores at a widespread scale.
Apart from removing the technology altogether at some stores, retailers, including Walmart, have taken a number of steps to address some of the challenges posed by self-checkout.
Earlier this year, BI reported several Walmart locations were limiting access to self-checkout lanes to users of either the company's Walmart+ or Spark delivery apps.
Target instituted a change that capped item counts to ten or fewer in the self-service lanes — a move the company said helped make the checkout process twice as fast as when there were no limits. Some stores also began limiting the hours that the self-checkout lanes were open.
Researchers found that self-checkout drives a phenomenon known as "partial shrink," where inventory is lost due to customers failing to properly scan and pay for all of the items in their transactions.