Imagine, just for a minute, a time in the future when retail stores don’t have cash registers or long lines of customers waiting for a cashier.
If you’re an Apple shopper, you know the future is now. And if you frequent JCPenney, you’ll start seeing changes toward this direction as early as this fall when the retail giant – in the midst of a makeover – installs powerful Wi-Fi networks and mobile checkout.
By next year, all goods sold at JCPenney will use RFID (radio-frequency identification) as a means of tracking. What this means to you, the customer, is if you choose to self-checkout, you simply put the items on the counter – no scanning involved – you’re given the total, you swipe your credit or debit card and out the door you go.
What this does for JCPenney, according to CEO Ron Johnson in an interview with CNN Money, is free up a half billion dollars spent annually on check-out stations and let employees do real customer service, not just stock shelves.
It also will provide the customer with the best of both the online and brick-and-mortar shopping experience, he said. For example, say you find three suits online, but you’d like to try them on before purchasing. Imagine walking into the store and having them ready for you in the dressing room.
Online retail will level off in the next 10 years – that 40 percent of online shoppers choose in-store pick up is a telling statistic, according to Johnson – and JCPenney will be ready.
What about you? Are you ready to join the cashless society?
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Did JCPenney write this for you? This, and Johnson, are ridiculous. To be dazzled by a one hour song and dance is one thing, but to ignore the model, the demographic, and the way human beings shop is absurd. Johnson needs this to work for his ego, not for America or America’s favorite store. Cashless? Do you understand the millions of Americans and immigrants who ONLY shop with cash? Do you know a single person who has ever said to you, “Gee, I love those self checkouts. They’re so handy and always function as they should”? Johnson didn’t think this through because he cannot think it through. His former glory as head of Apple retail is a sham, as he was only doing what the visionary Steve Jobs told him to do. Johnson is a no-trick pony, mimicking the success he implemented (not envisioned) at Apple. Copying is the only thing he knows, and in mass market retail, copying a computer company that revolutionized the world is like a dog copying a fish. Disaster is coming.
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