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(San)deep's World. Wise observations from Prof. Sandeep Krishnamurthy, Associate Professor of Marketing and E-Commerce, author, educator, Dad, coach, racquetball player, evangelist, speaker and thinker.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Costco Testing Quick-Check

From Tim Razeltoff(Abarim Business Computers)

Costco Testing Quick-Check

Costco is either experimenting or has begun to institute a form of quick-check in its stores. Costco floor supervisors are usually near the cash registers to respond quickly to questions or problems. They also spend a lot of time just observing and not really doing much. Costco has figured out a way to make the time of those floor supervisors more productive.



Yesterday at the Aurora Village store I noticed that 2 of the floor supervisors were carrying hand-held scanners. They moved into the customer lines, scanning carts that had a smaller number of items. They would scan the customer's Costco card and the purchases in the cart. When the customer got to the cashier they only needed to give the cashier the Costco card to scan and the bill rang up immediately. Items never needed to be taken from the cart and the process was done in seconds.



It looks like Costco has found a way to speed the lines, make better use of personnel resources, make the store more efficient, and probably reduce costs - all with current personnel.



I don't know whether this is an experiment or whether Costco is already implementing this new program. I also don't know whether the scanners are from Intermec or some other company.

2 comments:

Michael Stiber said...

This is interesting, Sandeep. I'm on sabbatical in Sam's Club land, and early on came to the conclusion that Sam's Club is a poor imitation of Costco (similar layout, similar products [I think lower quality, but that may be bias showing], less friendly/helpful employees, much less traffic). Their check-out procedure is typically less efficient than Costco's, except on the (rare) occasions when they have someone using Quick-Check. When I first saw Quick-Check, I said, "Costco needs this much more than Sam's Club."

Anonymous said...

I think your blog is great. I have learned about the company on the www.pissedconsumer.com. Costco is the nationwide retail chain. It includes online applications and benefit information. The company specializes in selling products at low prices and high volume. Target customers of the company are large families and businesses. Costco is world's leading membership warehouse club chain. Personally I did not yet happen to deal with a company.

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