Grocery retailer Kaufland is digitizing the shopping experience at more than 50 branches with the help of the Kaufland app on its own scanner or smartphone. Biggest advantage: The tedious task of emptying to refill the trolley directly after checkout is no longer necessary with a solution called “K-Scan”.
Kaufland isn’t following quite as radical a approach as Amazon, with Go branches operating in the United States and the United Kingdom, which operate entirely without a cash register, but it might be worth it when shopping with K-Scan. The most annoying evil (besides lugging bag) can now be eliminated from the process when using the new solution: endless loading and unloading of shopping carts.
Hand scanner or smartphone app
The K-Scan consists of a handheld scanner that customers registered for a Kaufland card can carry at the entrance of the supermarket to scan the goods themselves when they are placed on the trolley. There is a holder for the scanner on the shopping trolley to keep your hands free. As an alternative to the scanner, you can also use your smartphone for the procedure by selecting the K-Scan menu item in the Kaufland app.
Pay by QR Code at Self Service Checkout
Payment is still done at checkout, but is no longer done the old fashioned way, with all items being removed from the shopping cart and placed on a conveyor belt to be recorded personally by the cashier so they can be packed . Again, but through a scanner or respectively a smartphone-generated QR code, which previously specifically scanned baggage. This last step also happens independently, as Kaufland offers self-checkout for cashing in, which is already being used at about 120 branches across the country. Classic purchases without a scanner can also be billed separately at these checkouts.
According to its own statements, Kaufland operates more than 750 branches in Germany, and K-Scan can already be used in branches in the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia, in addition to more than 50 branches in Germany that Suitable for beginners.
