STORES Magazine - November 2008 - (Page A2)

A strain on the system The goal of all this is to provide the consumer with what she wants: a pleasant, unhurried shopping experience. Once she’s finished browsing and selecting, however, she wants to check out and leave the store, and she wants to do it in fairly short order. During periods of normal traffic, the usual configuration of the store should enable you to meet both these needs without too much difficulty. As we noted earlier, however, traffic isn’t always normal. There are times when customer traffic is not just higher than normal, but is a multiple of its usual volume. In situations like this, long lines of people waiting to reach the POS station can become a real problem. It’s frustrating to the people standing in line, because they want to pay for their purchases and leave. It’s frustrating for the people still trying to shop, because they can’t get through the crowds to reach the merchandise. And it’s ex- tremely frustrating to the cashiers; they’re working as fast as they can and dealing with an increasingly impatient public. Line busting A classic example of this phenomenon is what happens in college bookstores at the beginning of term, when students jam the place to buy textbooks, and again at the end, when the bookstore buys back many of those same textbooks. The rest of the time, a college bookstore is a fairly calm place; people are shopping for gifts or something to read or browsing movies or games. To deal with this problem, a number of university bookstores now maintain a number of wheeled mobile cash wraps called Shop Abouts. These units, which can be stored out of the way when they aren’t needed, serve as complete, freestanding POS stations. During quarter opening at the bookstore of the University of California at San Diego, for example, they are wheeled out and positioned back to back, moving students through the store and through the lines at a rate that would be impossible for the normal fixed POS stations to manage. “Set-up for the units is minimal,” says Don Moon, associate director of the UCSD Bookstore. “They can be operational very quickly and then we can go back to normal with very little effort. We also use the Shop Abouts for remote sales oppor- Shop About “We use the Shop Abouts for remote sales opportunities such as seasonal sales on the plaza, in dining halls or at sporting events.” — Don Moon, associate director, UCSD Bookstore A2 www.anthro.com/retail NOVEMBER 2008 http://www.anthro.com/retail

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - November 2008

STORES Magazine - November 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Every Cup Counts What Shoppers Think Less Park Time, More Shop Time 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Retail Held Captive First Look Concept2Watch Marketing Technology Custom Software PCI Compliance Data Security Arts Update Newsbeat LP Issues: Q&A Cover Story Surveillance Systems Online Fraud Industry Perspective LOEB Retail Letter Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - November 2008

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