A NEW study from the UK’s leading money-saving brand has revealed that the majority of Britons don’t have a positive interaction with supermarket self-scan tills.

A total of 38 per cent said they’ll never use self-scan again and 34 per cent said they abandon three items per month on average at self-scan. According to the poll, supermarkets lose an estimated £40.5m £40,503,277.62 a month in abandoned sales.

According to the research, Britons abandon items at self-scan because the queues are too long, they can’t get assistance from staff or they’re struggling to scan the item. As a result, supermarkets lose £486m a year.

The team at www.vouchercloud.com undertook the study as part of ongoing research into shopping habits and attitudes towards technology.

A total of 2,481 Britons aged 18 and over, all of whom stated they were in control of their own weekly and monthly shopping and had used self-scan on at least one occasion, were quizzed on their experiences using retail technology while shopping.

Initially, all respondents were asked to identify all experiences they had had while using self-scan, to which the most common responses were ‘I come away saying I’ll never use them again, even though I do’ (38 per cent), ‘I tend to abandon a couple of items that I wanted to purchase’ (34 per cent) and ‘I regularly have to get assistance from staff’ (27 per cent).

Furthermore, just 16 per cent of respondents stated they ‘sought out self-service over manned checkouts’, with a further eight per cent stating they’ve ‘never had any problems/issues with self-scan.’ All respondents who stated that they had abandoned purchases at self-scan were asked why they had done so.

The top five results were: 1. The queues were too long/too slow and I didn’t want to wait – 64 per cent 2. I couldn’t get assistance from staff – 62 per cent 3.It wouldn’t scan on the system and I got frustrated – 55 per cent 4. I decided I no longer needed the item – 49 per cent 5. The item didn’t fit into my carrier bag(s) – 23 per cent.

Respondents who had abandoned purchases were asked roughly how many items they had chosen to abandon a month and how much they estimated the items cost, to which the responses collated showed the average respondent ditched three items a month, totalling on average £2.34.

With the Office of National Statistics* stating there are currently 50,909,098 Britons aged 18 and over in the UK, that equates to 17,309,093 Britons who find themselves regularly abandoning purchases at self-scan. With the average cost per Briton totalling £2.34 per month, that’s £40,503,277.62 in sales abandoned in supermarkets per month – or £486,039,331.44 per year in abandoned purchases and supermarket lost sales.

Chris Johnson, the head of operations at vouchercloud.com, said: “We’re shocked at how much supermarkets are losing on an annual basis – £486m is an immense amount of money.

"Yes, £2 here and there doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but add that up and you have a fortune that supermarkets are losing out on."

“When self-scan tills came into operation everyone was excited – it a was a new way of shopping and the plan was that they’d help to reduce queues, speed up the shopping process and help supermarkets save costs on manned tills. But it’s not often you hear of people having seamless interactions with them, with phrases such as ‘unexpected item in bagging area’ becoming the bane of our lives. Manufacturers need to continue investing money into self-scan tills in order to improve the service that they provide and prevent purchase loss at the point of sale. This will mean needing to pump more money into research and development, but in the short term it could be as simple as supermarkets having more staff on hand when self-scan gets busy to ensure shoppers having troubles get help much quicker and don’t abandon purchases.”