AEON Retail, Japan’s largest retail corporation created a pleasant, gamified shopping experience with their RegiGo app powered by Scandit. The app’s self-scanning and self-checkout features reduced checkout wait times and increased store sales. A growing affinity among shoppers to continue engaging with the app, further increased its usage.
As a business, we wanted to ensure that our customers benefited from contact-free shopping, to keep safe during the pandemic. We also wanted to enhance our self-scanning solution, and partnered with Scandit to integrate their smartphone scanning solution in our app – offering our customers an enjoyable user experience.
Minoru Yamamoto, Operating Officer and Chief Officer – System Solution Division, AEON Retail
Challenge
AEON Retail, part of the Aeon Group is Japan’s largest shopping mall operator. With around 400 stores across Japan, ranging from supermarkets and shopping malls, it is also the largest in Japan with sales exceeding two trillion yen.
In the past, AEON Retail introduced self-checkouts at some of their stores to address staff shortages and reduce in-store checkout wait times. However, this concept, which involved a tablet-based self-checkout shopping cart did not meet business expectations. More importantly, customers faced difficulties scanning barcodes on products with curved surfaces such as wine bottles, chilled or frozen products with barcodes that were distorted owing to wet surfaces, or those with barcodes at difficult angles, and ones that had to be scanned in poor lighting.
Reduce checkout wait times, improve shopper experience and operational efficiencies
More recently, the company decided to enhance the shopping experience with RegiGo, their mobile shopping app. The aim was to offer customers an enjoyable shopping experience with self-scanning and self-checkout capabilities embedded in RegiGo – which would provide a gamified experience where customers are in total control, scanning the products they wish to purchase, checking prices and paying for them.
The scanned products would display as a list on the smartphone screen where shoppers can review the products and the cost of their purchases in advance of paying for them. They then scan the QR code on the RegiGo terminal, and use either cash, card or electronic payment to quickly pay for purchases, which would eliminate long wait times.
The mobile app will also reduce the time staff spend in store operations such as scanning customer purchases and operating a POS terminal, enabling them to focus on other store priorities. AEON Retail planned to deploy RegiGo on smartphones, which customers can pick up in-store to scan and purchase products. They realised that for the RegiGo shopping app to be successful, the barcode scanning component had to be highly accurate, offering reliable product barcode scanning in all types of environments.
Solution
High-performance scanning app creates an enjoyable shopping experience
AEON Retail’s app developer, Irasshaimase Inc tested several solutions, and selected Scandit as the scanning component for the RegiGo shopper app. According to Naoto Kayukawa, CEO at Irasshaimase Inc., “While scanning accuracy and speed were a key requirement, our selection parameters were also based on the app’s capital investment, operational costs and ease of integration with the shopper app. We tested other software-based scanning solutions alongside Scandit’s smartphone scanning solution based on these parameters and found Scandit outperformed the rest.”
View the RegiGo app powered by Scandit’s barcode scanner SDK on AEON-provided smartphones.
The RegiGo app powered by Scandit’s smartphone scanning solution is used in 24 stores across Japan. It offers an easy-to-use, hassle-free experience for shoppers, ranging from youngsters to the elderly. They don’t need to register their details or become members to use the RegiGo shopper app. Shoppers simply pick up the smartphones provided at the store entrance, and press the ‘start’ button to commence scanning.
According to Minoru Yamamoto, “We are very impressed with the performance and ease of use of the Scandit barcode scanner SDK in our RegiGo app. We have witnessed exceptional pick-up in the usage rate amongst our shoppers. As a result, the business is keen to add RegiGo in over 100 stores across Japan, in 2021.”
Results
- Increase in store sales
- 5%
- Improvement in customer acceptance with the app compared to previous solutions
- 35%
- The app has a retention rate of over 67%
- >67%
Self-scanning app engages shoppers, speeds up checkouts, and increases sales
To AEON Retail’s delight, the usage rate of the RegiGo app is increasing. It’s currently at a thirty percent higher usage rate compared to similar solutions in the past which saw a negligible uptake. “We attribute the high usage rate to the ease of use of the Scandit-powered RegiGo app, which accurately scans barcodes in all environments: low light, glare, awkward angles such as curved surfaces and damaged barcodes,” says Naoto Kayukawa.
Shoppers who use the RegiGo app state that the high-performance scanning helps them shop faster and save time, as they no longer have to queue at the till to pay for purchases. In a survey conducted by AEON Retail, over 67 percent of shoppers stated that they enjoy using the RegiGo app and would continue doing so. This is way higher than the 33 percent engagement attributed to scanning solutions from other providers within the industry.
Increased shopper engagement has led to a rise in the number of products purchased through RegiGo. The app’s ‘list’ display makes it easier for shoppers to review their purchases and buy products they would in normal circumstances forget to purchase, rather than having to dash off to a convenience store to purchase them later.
This increase in purchases via the self-scanning app has led to a five percent rise in store sales. Purchase amounts by customers using the app compared to those using traditional checkout methods have increased by an average of 5 USD per basket, and two additional items per customer.
The self-scanning app has also freed up time for store associates to focus on important activities such as ensuring adequate stock levels on shelves and in the back office.
Scale up self-scanning for back office and retail industry operations
AEON Retail is in the process of providing shoppers the option of using the Scandit-powered RegiGo app on their smartphones, in addition to offering self-scanning on rental smartphones in-store.
As the demand for contactless shopping continues to increase, AEON Retail has expressed interest in using Scandit’s barcode scanning technology in back-office operations such as shelf management. The business is also keen to improve productivity with self-scanning within the e-commerce and logistics areas of retail.