It would seem from recent press reports that UK supermarket chains are finally falling out of love with self service checkout tills. The BBC news website reported last week that several major supermarket chains are now rethinking their strategy in respect of the whole self service concept. Asda said it would put more staff on checkouts, while Morrisons admitted it might have "gone too far" with self-scan. Northern upmarket chain Booths has got rid of them altogether. It would seem that some of my predictions are now starting to come true. The level of customer dissatisfaction with self scan tills seems to now have reached a level where the large retailers are finally starting to take notice. It has to be said that a minority of customers do prefer self service - especially people with autism, who can find interacting with other people to be stressful. From my own research, however, a majority of supermarket customers would far rather be served by a real person. Indeed, for many living alone, the contact with a checkout person may be the only human contact they experience all day. I am vehemently opposed to the exclusive deployment of self service tills for a number of reasons; firstly it has been demonstrated that the average time to complete a supermarket self service transaction is up to three times as long as one carried out by a staffed till – and that is without allowing for system errors. Secondly, why would you have a dog and bark yourself? Quite often the checkout person adds to the whole retail experience, and can problem solve on the go. Elderly people, or customers with small children can also find self service stressful. On top of this, the supermarkets only introduce self service as they think it will reduce their staffing overheads. This has proved to be a false economy, as although the number of checkout staff is reduced, the number of supervisors and security operatives has to increase – who tend to be paid a higher rate than the checkout staff. Morrisons chief executive has claimed the store "went a bit too far" with the self-checkout. Although they drive some productivity, "some shoppers dislike it, mainly when they have a full trolley", I was made aware over a year ago that Morrisons in Erith had planned to remove all but four staffed checkouts with self service units, although thankfully this has never materialised. What I have noticed however is the reduction in the number of staffed checkouts open - in fact, on a busy Friday morning last week, I went to purchase two items in the Erith branch. Despite long queues there were only two staffed tills open. I understand that Morrisons have cut back quite drastically on the number of staff employed in each store in order to try and reduce costs, but this has been at the expense of customer satisfaction. The rot would have seemed to have set in when Morrisons were purchased by American investment and private equity company Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in 2021. The situation with the supermarket appears to have deteriorated since, with the supermarket being loaded with debt, which they now have to service, rather than investing in the business. Relatively new CEO of the company, Ex-Carrefour France boss Rami Baitiéh said in an interview with the Reuters news agency "Since the pandemic, Morrisons has not been on peak form, our market share has slipped, slowly but consistently, our like-for-likes (sales), although on an improving and encouraging trend now, have been below the pack for a while, and the switching data has not been encouraging, So although we have many structural, operational and cultural strengths, we must not be satisfied with our recent performance." He said the chain was now "reviewing" its number of self-service checkouts, with plans to remove some in favour of staffed tills. His comments came after Asda pledged to put more staff on checkouts after admitting it had reached a limit with self-service tills. Morrisons, which differs from its main rivals in that it also has its own production operations and makes half of the fresh food it sells, was overtaken by Aldi in 2022 as Britain's fourth-largest supermarket by market share. As I have previously written - people are voting with their feet. Whilst of course customers should be able to use self service automated checkouts, it should not be imposed upon them. There used to be an old expression - "The customer is king" - and it would appear to be that at last it is becoming true once again. What do you think? Email me with your feedback to the usual address - hugh.neal@gmail.com.
In the past I have written extensively about electric vehicles (EV's). Whilst there are many pros and cons to running an EV an issue has come to light which nobody appears to have considered before. Chinese car makers are heavily pushing to gain a foothold in the UK it seems, as ads for these brands are popping up all over the place, and dealerships – although most likely not dedicated dealerships are stocking various brands of Chinese EV's. When one of China’s once-popular electric vehicle startups went bust, car owners encountered an unexpected problem: Their vehicles went “offline.” A driver called Richard Qian did not know what to expect when he heard that WM Motor, a Shanghai-based EV maker popular for its low prices, filed for bankruptcy in October 2023. He tried to drive his compact EX5 SUV (photo of a similar vehicle above - click on it to see a larger version) as he normally would, but discovered that he could no longer log into WM Motor’s smartphone app, which remotely controlled the car lock and air conditioner. He also could not see his car’s mileage and charging status on the dashboard. EV startups are not exactly a China-only thing, but there are definitely more of them than there are non-Chinese ones, since even brands already well-established in China will effectively be startups again when entering the European or American markets. If an otherwise successful Chinese car maker does not survive in Europe, the end result is the same as if it were a European EV startup: no dealer network, no spare parts, and most likely, no servers to run your EV app. The idea of spending tens of thousands of pounds on a car that randomly loses a bunch of its functionality because its brand went under sounds like a nightmare to me, especially since so many features are now digitally embedded into electronic black boxes, down to even the door handles. Incidentally, Registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEV) continue to fall in the European continent, as sales growth slows in the US and British manufacturing of the wheeled machines declines sharply. The EV revolution is showing early signs of running out of charge in Europe, while reports paint a less rosy picture in the US too after consulting firm J.D. Power lowered its sales forecast for EV growth from 12 percent this year to just 9 percent. According to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), BEVs accounted for 12 percent of the EU car market in July, down from 13.5 percent the previous year. New registrations of the vehicles dropped by 10.8 percent, with shrinkage in countries such as Germany (down 36.8 percent) offsetting gains elsewhere. In the UK, there was a healthy 10.5 percent increase in BEV registrations year on year; this was eclipsed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), which enjoyed a 28.2 percent increase in registrations, and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), the registrations of which increased by 17.1 percent. The market share of petrol-powered vehicles in Britain was still above 50 percent at 54.7 percent, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). In terms of production in the UK, electrified (BEV, PHEV, and HEV) vehicle manufacturing dropped 18.6 percent year-on-year in July. However, the 37.5 percent share in output represented only a relatively small drop compared to 39.5 percent in July 2023. Overall UK car production declined 14.4 percent. Nicholas Farhi, a partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants, put the decline down to worries about range, among other factors. Noting that UK production of electrified vehicles appears to have backfired, he pointed to upcoming research from OC&C that indicates a decline in the number of consumers definitely or likely to buy an EV as their next car, dropping from 28 percent to 20 percent. "The main perceived barriers remain range, access to charging points, and cost to purchase," he said in an article published on The Register technology news website. He added: "Current EV drivers are, however, highly satisfied, with 80 percent strongly advocating EVs to their friends, with the only material source of their complaint being out-of-home charging that is hard to find, hard to pay for, slow, or broken." Despite the slower-than-expected growth rate in the US, J.D. Power still predicted EV sales would account for 36 percent of the country's market in 2030 and rise above 50 percent by 2035. Although the decline in output in the UK can predominately be attributed to model changeovers and supply chain challenges, at least according to the SMMT, the market share figures in Europe and the US indicate that customers able to afford electrified vehicles and access charging infrastructure have likely already made their purchasing decision. For other customers, making the switch to a new electric car remains a costly decision that is increasingly being deferred.
The image is of a historical painting of the river front at Erith. Nothing that unusual there then - except that the painting now hangs in The Louvre in Paris. Quite why such an apparently unremarkable painting should hang in the same gallery as the Mona Lisa is beyond me, but it is very gratifying to know. The artist was a chap called Charles Francois Daubigny, and he painted the river scene at Erith in 1866.
Every local radio station set up in the Bexley area has historically closed down through a lack of both money and listeners. The original community radio station Radio Thamesmead, which originally broadcast by cable from its’ studios in Tavy Bridge (now demolished) later metamorphosed into RTM Radio in 1990, when it got itself a FM broadcast licence on 103.8 MHz. It was very much a community centred station, and any profits generated were ploughed back into projects to benefit the local area. It ran successfully for nearly ten years, until in 1999 it was successful in an application to the Radio Authority to change its’ remit and become a fully commercial operation. When this was permitted, the station changed its’ name to Millennium 106.8 FM in the year 2000. This name was again changed in 2003 to Time FM (not to be confused with the excellent, Romford based Time 107.5 FM which is a successful and ongoing broadcasting business today), in an attempt to try and forge a link with the Greenwich Meridian, and to strengthen its’ local identity. Shortly thereafter the station was purchased by the Sunrise Radio group, and was run by them until 2009. The stations’ audience ratings were never that good, though it did have a small, but dedicated following. In its’ final year, the audience had shrunk to just 13,000 people – less than one percent of the listening audience for the area. Sunrise put Time FM up for sale, famously putting an advert on the station’s website before any staff knew about it. No buyer was found, and the station closed for good in April 2009. Time FM was not alone in being a local radio broadcaster – there was a second contender, which actually had studios in Erith, based on the Europa Industrial Estate in Fraser Road. This was a station called TGR Sound 103.7 FM. It was a volunteer run, not for profit station that went on air back in November 2006 and set out to provide community information and news, as well as both mainstream and specialist music programming. When it initially started, it was Internet only, but soon got an FM broadcast licence. To say the station was homespun would probably be probably under – describing it. There were many occasions when I would tune in and be able to hear a conversation going on in the studio, as the presenter had forgotten to switch the microphone off whilst they were in the middle of playing a track. Bearing in mind part of their mission statement was to train future presenters, a certain degree of mistakes were I suppose to be expected, but it did seem that things went wrong with depressing regularity – it was as if there was no supervision of inexperienced presentation staff. Coming from my own historical background in radio, it was very easy to work out what was going wrong and when, and it made for occasionally painful listening. TGR stood for Thames Gateway Radio, although some local wag soon called it Totally Godawful Radio. It was designed to be a community resource, not a commercially viable radio station. It was funded from a mixture of central government and GLA grants. Once the recession began to bite, the funding soon dried up and TGR Sound was forced to close down. I am always supportive of local enterprises, but TGR Sound was really not very good at all, and it never really succeeded in finding an audience – I doubt that many people in the London Borough of Bexley even realised that it existed, and if they did come across it whilst tuning around the FM radio dial, they probably thought that it was a particularly inept pirate. Things are different nowadays – the number of amateur / hobby stations that broadcast online is huge and extremely varied. A potential listener can be spoiled for choice. The history of local community based radio does not read well. Every station that has been set up in the area has ended up closing through lack of money. Comments to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
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