At major membership stores like Costco and Sam's Club one inconvenience is having to show a receipt to verify the products you're leaving the store with. Now Sam's Club is trying out a new AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool to make that exit nuisance a thing of the past.
Here's what parent company Walmart says:
Currently running pilots across 10 Sam’s Club locations, the technology is used to seamlessly confirm members have paid for all items in their shopping carts – without requiring an associate to check members’ purchases before leaving the club.
Before this technology, members were slowed by queuing at the club’s exit area to have Sam’s Club exit greeters review receipts.
Members continue to say they want a faster and more convenient shopping experience and consistently rated the wait times at the exit – especially during busy periods – as a pain point in the shopping experience.
Now, after a member completes payment at a register or via Scan & Go, a combination of computer vision and digital technology deployed in the exit area of the club captures images of carts and verifies payment for all items within a member’s basket. With AI working in the background to continually speed the process, this digital innovation not only streamlines the member’s exit, but also allows exit greeters to refocus their time and expertise to assisting members and ensuring they have an enjoyable shopping experience.
More than half of members at the pilot locations are already seeing the benefits of the new experience. With AI constantly learning and improving across any of Sam’s Club’s thousands of items and exit transactions at multiple locations, the company said it will continue iterating and enhancing the technology through early 2024, intending to rapidly expand it to its nearly 600 clubs by the end of the year.
Sam’s Club is the first retailer to deploy this technology at exit and at scale, a natural extension of how the club uses digital innovation to enhance the shopping experience through Scan & Go. Scan & Go allows members to use the Sam’s Club mobile app to capture purchases on-the-go and bypass the traditional checkout line in the club, as well as at the fuel station and Café.
