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> “We have different ideas of efficiency now,” Wood says. “We want to shop with as little intrusion by anyone else as possible. Self-checkout is one of, in my opinion, the least efficient tools in the world, yet everyone is obsessed with using self-checkout at the grocery store. It’s so much faster to just wait in line and have someone check out for you.”

There seem to be contradictory statements there. No wonder online vendors are killing the retail outlet.

Self checkout appears to be a way to lower both employee costs and customer satisfaction. These systems often don't work well, and with the cashier staff reduced to minimums, often it takes longer to un-wedge the self checkout process than to wait for the one or two human cashiers among the 20+ unused registers. My local Target and Home Depot stores come to mind.

> In actuality, I think Amazon is highly inefficient if you don’t know what you’re buying because you don’t have anyone to help you and say, ‘No, actually, this is better than that.’

That service died with the management ilk of chains like Circuit City in the US that replaced experienced, knowledgable salespeople with underpaid "ad pushers", trained in nothing more than moving the hot item of the week. In some cases I found it most efficient to order online for pickup at the local store, and bypass all the unhelpful "help".

With Amazon, I can at least read reviews, attempt to pick out those that are informed, and get some actual information. Modern retail does not have a current or past equivalent.

Under the right circumstances, self checkout lanes are very efficient. Just keep your items to a minimum and no fussy items that you have to look up (like produce, or one off items). A lot of times I'll go to a store with only one or two lanes open, and those are packed, while I can just zip through a self checkout lane with only a few items.

Other thoughts:

I think its an incredibly stupid law in CA to limit alcohol in self checkout lanes

I was a grocery store cashier for 4 years. IME slow customers are going to be slow at any lane.

Customers who dig out change and count it for exact cash are fucking slow, self checkout or not.

Many self checkout systems are purposely designed to run slower than possible to combat shrinkage (theft). There are some systems that do run at full speed and don't depend on weighing each item after a scan. I was a grocery store clerk many years ago and the funny thing is that the IBM systems in the early 90's could run circles around the throughput possible with today's ponderous staffed checkout systems.
Amazon had a nice tax dodge for a while too. Lower price for the same thing; not bad.
Amazon is frequently more expensive on some items I buy; I still buy from Amazon because the experience is better, cost savings be damned.

Drive to the store, have to talk to someone, grab item, checkout, drive home? NOPE.

Retail stores just physically cannot compete on choice. There's only so much stock that you can hold at a walk-in store and they all seem to become necessarily limited to the 'popular and generic items'. The smaller niche stores meanwhile get squeezed out by rising costs.

There have been times I've gone into the city with the intention of buying something from a retail store, because I want it that day. I spend hours walking around trying to find the particular thing that I know I want, but to no avail. Everyone seems to carry the same stuff and more often than not it isn't the stuff that's generally recommended as excellent.

One example that comes to mind - I went out once looking for an iPhone/Android compatible game controller (specifically it was the MOGA Power Pro but I would have taken anything similar at the time). Went to the only big game store chain we have (EB Games), couldn't find it. Went to the two big electronics store chains we have; couldn't find it. Went to two different big-box department store chains we have; couldn't find it. I think I even went to the Apple store and they didn't have the one I was looking for. Ended up just ordering it online.

Another example - one day I felt like getting some physical books. Went out to the local mall and to the physical bookstore they have there. Worse situation. Out of the whole store, I think only two shelves were computer/IT books. Nearly all of which were "Teach yourself X in Y hours" or "Microsoft Office something or other". Figured this was a lost cause; I could take the nearly hour commute into the CBD and go to one of the big shops but at that point I thought, why bother? Ordered from Amazon, just waited for the international shipping. At least I got what I was looking for without feeling like I wasted my time.

For an educated consumer, there is just no reason to go retail other than the social experience. I don't remember it always being like this, but maybe it's because I was young and without the ubiquitous Internet you actually went to a store to browse and discover new products.

It used to be different and exciting to go to a big electronics/music/book store and see all the new things that you didn't know about before walking in the store. That just isn't the world we live in anymore.

Maybe it is more of an Australian thing but limited choice is a big thing for me. I currently live in a rural area and the last few times I have travelled to the nearest city to do shopping I have left disappointed and swore I would just shop online in future.

It used to be there would be many different stores offering specialised stock but now it is all identical franchises nationwide. People drive to the nearest big box store that has the same severely limited range as the next big box store a 20 minute drive away. You can travel from one side of the country to the other and every store is the same. Useless.

Good riddance. I've never liked shopping, and these days, if I can't find something in 10 minutes, I'll go home and buy it online in 5. Note that I'm more than willing to try buying local first, support local businesses, etc, but malls have always been a blight.
I wonder why the flagship department stores seem to have perished in the USA but not as much in Europe. Of course Harrods comes to mind. KaDeWe in Berlin is an amazing store the recalls and even surpasses the main Marshall Fields in Chicago 50 years ago. KaDeWe is always packed with locals and tourists alike. The author of the article seems solely focused on the USA.
Nordstroms in the US seems to be doing fine using the classic department store setup. I think the difference is they don't sell electronics or home appliances and target upmarket.

IMO, while everyone blames online shopping it's arguably the death of the middle class that's really at fault.

I don't need to visit frequently, but when I do, I am always surprised and delighted by the customer service at Nordstrom. They seem to be the only national brick & mortar chain [I've encountered] that has a Zappo's level of service.
They haven't perished at all. Some of them had to contract some, after all you don't need 3 department stores and 2 malls in a small urban area in central Ohio in the Internet age. To compare to Berlin, look to NY or San Francisco - Nordstrom's, Saks, Bloomingdales, etc are all test I'll there and still crowded.

Also worth noting the rise of a new category of mall (new since the 80s and growing rapidly in the past decade) - the outlet mall. These are huge, often outdoor malls with many traditional and non-traditional anchors. They draw millions of shoppers from much further away than traditional malls, and offer atomic competition for offline shopping, and a destination for a 'shopping trip as entertainment'.

That's been the situation in Wichita, Kansas with regard to the statement about Central Ohio. They overbuilt the two malls we do have and now they're slowly bleeding out (the west side mall is hit the hardest imo) by the newer open air 'malls' in the new suburban developments outside of town. But I think Wichita itself is an anomaly since it's been losing all the higher paying jobs in manufacturing for the last fifteen years and hasn't replaced them with their equivalents in other industries (basically, who wants to setup a business in Kansas or Wichita seems to be the question implied.).