A familiar picture: a large fashion store, there are many cash registers, but only one is open and there is a long line next to it. How to minimize such situations that negatively affect customer loyalty, while saving money?
Clothing and shoe stores usually have large areas, a large number of cash registers and staff responsible for their work and helping customers make a choice and make a purchase. However, despite all of the above, we regularly encounter queues there. As a rule, although the store has several stationary checkout islands, only two or three POS terminals are actually operational. As a result, the retailer loses revenue out of the blue, since a large percentage of customers, seeing that they have to spend time waiting in line, immediately go to competitors.
There are several reasons for this problem:
- The staff is not always properly motivated to promptly serve the customer;
- there are often more cash registers than sales floor workers;
- the process of selling clothes itself takes longer than, for example, making a purchase in grocery store. Therefore, the average customer waiting time at the checkout, even with a small number of items, is quite high.
Implementation of technology as a solution to store problems
Is it possible to fight this phenomenon? As our practice shows, yes, quite. To do this, it is enough to revise the company’s policy regarding personal motivation of staff and introduce special technologies that make it possible to serve customers more efficiently and quickly. Thus, modern retail automation equipment allows the store to abandon the classic stationary cash register island, where customers gather, in favor of payment acceptance points dispersed throughout the sales area, of which there may be more than regular cash registers.
The very pleasant fact is that you won’t have to pay extra for this modernization. Moreover, there is a high probability that the retailer will also save on equipment.
Today, almost every clothing store is equipped with mobile devices, for example, data collection terminals (DCs) or tablet computers, with which you can scan products and obtain information from a database. They will become the main tools in the converted store.
Using a mobile device, the sales assistant will be able to complete the client’s purchase by scanning the barcodes of the selected items and invite him to the payment acceptance point.
What does it look like?
From a technical point of view, everything looks like this: fiscal registrars (FR) or cash registers(KKM), but simply receipt printers connected to the store’s local network. Having generated a check on a mobile device, the consultant sends it for printing to any convenient financial institution. It is to this island that he leads the client, who can pay for the purchase there. And the consultant will remove anti-theft tags from the goods and pack them.
It is important to note that if you use this solution, you must ensure that the selected cash register software worked identically both on a regular POS terminal and on a mobile device.
It’s clear that even after upgrading the store, you won’t be able to get rid of stationary cash registers completely - you’ll have to leave at least one in case of emergency situations, for example, a technical failure, as a result of which it stops working the local network store.
Advantages of the solution for retailers
What are the benefits of modernization using express cash registers for a fashion store:
- The retailer refuses conventional POS terminals, which saves money allocated for its purchase and space, since he does not have to rack his brains about where to place large system units. Instead, only a fiscal registrar and a bank terminal will be located at the payment point - both devices are very small, so they take up very little space. This means that the island itself may be tiny.
- In the store, you can organize the correct motivation of employees: for consultants, if the number of sales affects their pay, it will be profitable to serve as many customers as possible. This means they will strive both to provide advice that will lead to a purchase, and to make payment and register the goods. By the way, the personal responsibility of sales floor employees also increases, which is also beneficial for the retailer.
- Upgrading a store will not require lengthy and complex training for store personnel. Accordingly, you will not have to incur additional expenses associated with it.
urgent problems of society" (P. Heine).
"The most harmful thing is not ignorance at all, but knowledge of a damn lot of
things that are actually wrong" (F. Knight, economist).
INTRODUCTION
I wrote this article because the concept of “queue” has become a weapon in the ideological struggle of the enemies of the “USSR” project.
In recent years, in Russia, and not only, heated debates have increasingly flared up over whether “the Russian people did the right thing by abandoning socialism.” Leaving for now the question of whether the people actually “refused” or whether this decision was made for them, let us consider this, without a doubt, bright bogey of “queues”, which market liberals are triumphantly waving, presenting the queue as a blatant example of the “ineffectiveness of the Soviet system.” Under pressure from very obvious facts, they often admit that, yes, they lived well, but the queues spoiled everything and therefore “such a country is not needed.” At the same time, dishonest people are trying to slip the average person a line of reasoning as primitive as a felt boot: queues are a consequence of a centralized economy, to eliminate them a market is needed, and the market, in turn, is incompatible with socialism and the USSR. What follows is the conclusion about the correctness of the destruction of socialism and the destruction of a great power.
From this article, the reader will be convinced that the above “female logic” of marketers is nothing more than a blatant and dishonest manipulation that has nothing to do with economic science or simply common sense.
In reality, the queue, as a social, economic and organizational phenomenon, is much more complex than they try to imagine.
WHAT IS A QUEUE?
It is interesting that not everyone is clearly aware that the queue has always existed in all societies, and not only in the USSR, as they are trying to convince us. For example, it is functioning perfectly now in the West. There it is called the “peak-load problem” and has long been solved by theoretical economics (see, for example,), and by human practice.
The idea that the market is destroying queues in general is simply a blatant fraud, not so much by smart people as by cunning and dishonest people pursuing their own very selfish goals. In fact, always and everywhere - a queue is evidence of limited resources, nothing more and nothing less. Carts at a crossing, cars at a traffic light, people in a dentist's waiting room or a canteen - all this is evidence of a limited resource.
A queue is a condition that occurs when serving one customer takes longer time than the time it takes for the next client to approach the service center - cash register, retail outlet, hairdresser, baggage control... In other words, a queue is a situation when the next order for service arrives before the service of the previous visitor is completed.
Everyone agrees with this. But there are two types of queues: the first - when, simply put, what they are queuing for does not end and “this” is enough for everyone, even if not right away; and the second - when “this” quickly ends and there is not enough for everyone. That is, the second is a case of the so-called “deficit”. Let us emphasize this point - “shortage” is a fundamentally different type of queue. Although from the outside they look the same - there is a line of people behind each other.
Now, as they say, watch your hands. The fact is that “scarcity” as a noticeable social phenomenon began to appear in the USSR from the late 70s, if we do not take into account the period of wars. The queue of the first type has always existed - both in the USSR and in all other countries.
Ideological opponents, as a rule, argue that there were always queues in the USSR, this was an inevitable part of it, therefore... in the USSR there was always a shortage and an inefficient economy. But this is far from true. I repeat once again - if we do not take into account the periods of wars, economic recovery and the initial period of Industrialization, then the situation with queues, in general, was quite good somewhere until the 80s. That is, for decades, the Soviet economy functioned successfully and supplies worked, on the whole, quite well, especially considering that all this happened after a series of destructive wars and in an extremely hostile environment.
We will not consider the phenomenon of “scarcity” in this article - because in its essence it is completely different from the queue. “Scarcity” (lack of something) can be without a queue at all. In addition, the very existence of a “deficit” does not mean the weakness of the economy, but only an incorrect distribution or other organizational and social phenomena. The second type of queue is a social barometer, nothing more and nothing less. It is an indicator of a very serious imbalance, when one person has a lot, and the other has nothing. Not necessarily economic, but quite possibly a social or criminal imbalance, an indicator that law enforcement agencies can no longer contain the pressure of crime, which has merged with the authorities.
As for the economy, in some cases the economy is efficient, but in others it is not. In general, the deficit is very great evil for public consciousness, it was not for nothing that it was used to manipulate society and destroy the country.
Let's also not take Stalin's times - this is a completely different conversation, when the Stalinist economy worked as planned - without wars and forced development, then queues and shortages necessary goods there was practically none. Also, we will not take the period of the last years of the USSR - the queues and deficits of this period should not go through the department of economics, but through the department of law enforcement agencies, since they had not an economic, but a clearly planned nature of sabotage before the planned destruction of the country.
If you try to consider the phenomenon of queues in the USSR over all periods of its existence, you will end up not with an article, but with a monograph of hundreds of pages, of little interest to the average reader. In this article we will look at the period of the “mature” USSR until the beginning of the transition period of the mid-to-late 70s, when the managerial elite of the Brezhnev period began to leave for another world and the country increasingly began to find itself in the hands of semi-mafia party clans, which ultimately led to to Perestroika. This was done because the Soviet System, in the form in which it was planned and built, began to be gradually destroyed from the late 70s to early 80s. And we are interested in what it was like as planned and what advantages and disadvantages it had.
There were queues during the period under review, but as a rule, they were of the first type - due to insufficient capacity of service points. From the point of view of the average person, it would seem that everything could not be simpler - if servicing a client takes so much time, then you just need to increase the number of service nodes or service points. But the simplicity of this solution is deceptive and the treatment can easily turn out to be much worse than the “disease” itself. The fact is that queues often make great economic sense - they provide significant benefits, providing greater profits and more optimal resource management than if you got rid of queues.
In an ideal world and under ideal conditions there should be no queue, but even then, only if the flow of customers is strictly stable over time. In real life, everything is different - the flow of clients is inconsistent, then twenty will come at the same time (for example, a bus arrived), then for half a day there will be no one at all. At the moment when the number of service orders exceeds the capacity of the serving node, a queue appears. Then, when fewer customers arrive, the queue disappears without a trace, as if it never existed. This process is repeated cyclically. For example, on a working day, as was usually the case in the USSR, there is no one in the store, and immediately after work there is a line almost to the door.
The same thing happens in any country in the world, even in the West, so beloved by “reformers” - half-hour and even hour-long queues at the supermarket on Friday and Saturday evenings are a completely ordinary thing and, despite the constant caricatures in the newspapers, nothing changes there either. And it won't change. A queue is a signal that the system's full load has been exceeded, or that there is a lack of redundancy, but it is far from a fact that it makes sense to increase this throughput.
Let's carry out a simple reasoning - if even in the most super-market economy the owner of a service point increases the number of staff, then there will be no queue during peak hours, but the hours when there are few customers and the staff are idle en masse will “eat up” all the profit.
In reality, the cost of employee salaries is not everything. Here we must add an additional number of service units, for example, cash registers, the cost of square meters, which will be used not for placing goods, but for the cash register, as well as the cost of managers who will manage additional personnel... Naturally, with an increase in the number of personnel, the price of the service also will increase, because the buyer pays for everything. Even without mathematical calculations, it is clear that there is a certain optimum between the queue and downtime of personnel and equipment. It is the requirement to maximize profits that forces the diner owner to keep his customers in line, at least sometimes, during the hot lunch hour.
Practice has shown that in reality it is technically impossible to organize work without queues in such a way that the required number of personnel appear at their work precisely at rush hour, although there have been attempts to solve this problem.
Now let's look at the situation through the client's eyes. After all, he constantly chooses where to go - where there is a queue, but the price of a service or product is lower, or where there is no queue, but the price is higher. The client knows that in one place he can get a service (for example, a haircut) for 10 coins, but without a queue, and in another for 5 coins, but after standing in line, or in a third the price will be 3 coins, but with a crush. Where will it go client, will depend on how and how much the client values his free time.
It may be objected to me that this can only be if all clients have the same income, then it will really be a matter of free time. That’s right, the main reason, other things being equal, determining the client’s behavior will be his income. Therefore, for example, the director of a corporation or an expensive lawyer will not stand in line at a cheap hairdresser, but will overpay triple the price even for the same quality of haircut. However, this requires serious social stratification with all the disadvantages that accompany it, such as crime. For example, in the mature USSR, everyone’s income was relatively equal - the official decile coefficient (without taking into account subsidies) did not exceed 4.4, and when recalculated taking into account subsidies for the poor - 2.2. Now - 15. By the way, the decile coefficient under Stalin was approximately 6 and there were significantly fewer queues, unless, of course, we take the war years into account.
Queues in the USSR were generated by equalizing principles - i.e. concern for low-paying citizens and a much smaller number of stores and retail outlets. The second aspect of “for some reason” is not paid attention to at all. Only the physical redundancy of goods and places of their distribution can objectively contribute to the predominance of queues of the first type. But this is not our Russian case. The USSR is not the rich West, which is located in a much more optimal climate, plus it robs the whole world, as a result of which it has many hands free from production and can afford such waste. TO optimal control This obviously has nothing to do with economics.
Look, now trade in Russia, by objective Russian standards, is so hypertrophied that it absorbs most of the profits of real production, undoubtedly increasing further degradation manufacturing sector. The only way out here is to return to the situation with queues, but at the same time transfer two-thirds of the people currently employed in trade, intermediation and finance to the real sector of the economy. When production starts working and is optimized, the queues will begin to disappear, as was the case, for example, after the War and at the end of Industrialization. Are queues evil? Yes, naturally, evil. But, alas, in this case the alternative is even worse.
Many patriotically minded citizens even declare that any government that does not fight excess trade will not be a government of national salvation. That is, the queue within reasonable limits is not a suppressive, but a stimulating factor for production.
From what has been discussed, the obvious conclusion is that, in general, queues increase the welfare of society because they provide more efficient loading of resources, which compensates for the loss of time caused by standing in queues. Of course, if the situation is not brought to the point of absurdity, as was purposefully done during the destruction of the USSR. But then massive queues arose for a completely different reason - as a result of economic sabotage, “cashed” rubles from the manufacturing sector poured into trade, which is why the money supply increased sharply, but prices remained the same, so people with “hot” money swept away everything.
It is strange to blame the Soviet System for this - it was already practically paralyzed by a series of blows.
Market experts argue that standing in queues is a waste of precious time. According to them, a limited resource - and this is a “scarcity” - should be given not to those who got in line earlier, but to those “who work more” (this is how the word is cleverly manipulated for those who have more money - these concepts are far from identical ) and needs more support. Well, of course, who else should the ideologists support? free market", not the poor?
In the USSR, the idea was diametrically opposite - the system was configured not only to optimize the load of labor and distribution resources, but also, above all, to ensure equal availability of basic goods, with little dependence on personal income. For the “marketeer,” the task is simply not posed in this way; the main thing for them is to ensure the decisive advantage of individuals with money over everyone else. And what price it will cost the whole society, how much it correlates with human concepts of morality and justice - they care least of all.
To illustrate the essence of the USSR approach and the usefulness of a certain number of queues for the entire society under socialism, I will give an example of an economic experiment, which P. Heine gives in his classic work. For ease of presentation, I do not present his economic calculations.
So, in experiments to optimize ticket prices in a 700-seat movie theater at a student college, revenues cover expenses with a ticket price of $3.15. At a price of $2.50, there is a line and the room is naturally 100% full. This is exactly the situation that existed in the USSR, when prices for many products and tickets to cultural institutions (theatres, cinemas, museums...) were subsidized.
However, everything changes if the goal is to get as much net revenue from the film as possible, so what will the price be? Answer: $5 If the price is set to $5, 500 tickets will be sold. The total proceeds will be $2,500 and the net proceeds will be $300. It can’t get any better.”
Please note a key point: at maximum revenue, 200 (almost a third!) seats in the cinema are empty. These are people who will be cut off from culture in order to maximize profits, but more on that a little later. But the most important thing in terms of efficiency is completely different: the market model is fundamentally incapable of ensuring the optimal allocation of resources. From 1/10 to 1/3 of the resource simply disappears.
Another very important point is that in the experiment under consideration, the cinema maximized its profit by significantly limiting access to the resource due to high prices. Yes, he won, but this means that in the entire social organism, where resources do not come from anywhere, someone else lost significantly.
The point here is that in any large system there are several levels of optimization, and “marketers”, hushing up the rest, artificially isolate only one level - optimization at the enterprise level, which dominates in a market economy, usually to the detriment of optimization at a higher level. Local systems at the same time, they conflict with each other, spending enormous resources on taking a piece from someone else, as was shown in the above experiment, rather than agreeing on the level of the entire society.
This is exactly what the USSR “travelled” to, this is what explains its high efficiency - it was built as a single integrated system, where optimization took place at the highest possible level. Moreover, the sacrifice of profit at the local level was deliberate, because there was a larger gain from optimizing the distribution of resources at the level of the entire society.
In the USSR, the ticket distribution model (and trade is precisely distribution and nothing else) would be solved as follows. The price of some tickets will be slightly lower than demand and will ensure that tickets are available to everyone. Then the vast majority will rush into line for cheap tickets. The other part of the tickets will be more expensive, but they will be on free sale. Finally, the third part of the tickets will be expensive, but always available and will be sold at high prices until last minute, and then the price may decrease. We will end up with a typical socialist model of trade. In this case, the second part will symbolize the Soviet cooptorg, and the third part will symbolize the market. Those who don’t want to stand behind cheap tickets will go and buy them a little more expensive. If we make the cooperative system more convenient, the retail outlets will be closer, best watch work, etc., then a significant part of the goods will go through the cooperative trade system. Such a system was extremely developed in the USSR during Stalin's time and was introduced at his insistence. Not surprisingly, there were few queues. By the way, the idea of cooperative trade at the state level and with state support belongs not to Stalin, but to Lenin. Stalin simply implemented it very successfully, despite the fierce resistance of the “Leninist revolutionaries.”
The costs of pacifying society in the event of ideological incidents would be many times greater than the losses incurred by the state by selling tickets at their cost. The current history of Russia has proven this perfectly.
And who loses as a result of incorrect optimization? The whole society loses, and quite heavily. The inevitable social stratification and isolation of a considerable number of people from benefits fundamentally inaccessible to them will have to be paid for by strong social tension, which results in epidemics of suicide, drug addiction, an epidemic of unmotivated cruelty and the reluctance of the population to give birth to children.
The cinema here is just an example, and by the way it’s quite good. The fact is that the choice in this case was made by students, not the most affluent part of the population - if a ticket costs 3 dollars, then a student can have something to eat for 2 and watch a movie, then for 5 he will have a choice - go to the cinema or have dinner . Generally speaking, 200 out of 700 people cannot have both dinner and entertainment under the market system. And there will always be such a fairly significant layer of those who, in principle, will not have access to social benefits above the minimum in a market economy. Naturally, the ratio will vary from 30% in the USA to 90% in Paraguay, but again, it will always be there. Do you think this is normal and natural? Well, then you get wild street gangs, a lot of suicides, unthinkable for the “damned scoop”, a sadistic boss, a close relative who became a drug addict and other delights of the “free market”.
Liberals point out that students and teachers paid with money, but in the USSR people “paid” with their time, which was even more wasted. Yes, time is money when it comes to production. But the vast majority of the population queues outside of working hours.
Another thing is that if people live correctly and everything is in order with public morality and health, then queues generally worsen the situation in society, since in general a person will have less time for his family, taking care of his health, for example, sports, and so on . The person in line experiences unnecessary stress.
You just need to remember that in a “market economy” a person spends even more time chasing money, and it’s better not to mention the stress experienced during this - stress in a moderate queue will seem like child’s play. You just need to be clearly aware of what society pays if it chooses social model– what is it “linked” to, what is its reverse side, payment for benefits?
What will happen if you increase the price, but do not add the amount of money, as the liberals propose? An increase in price in itself means that, with the same salary, the consumption of goods will decrease, since a person will be able to buy of this product less. But with stable money supply prices of other goods should decrease. If new money is not printed, then, given equal consumption and production, an increase in price will immediately cause a decrease in consumption, that is, there will be at least a slight overproduction, as happened in the case of the cinema. In other words, the efficiency of the economy will decrease, since part of the resources in the form of other overproduced goods will then be thrown into a landfill or service capacities will not be used.
Well, what about the liberals’ argument that the additional profit received from selling milk at an increased price will be used to expand its production? Not everything is so simple - the profit received from the sale of milk can be used to expand production if there is a guarantee that this will lead to a further increase in profits. Why on earth should they be? If the price of milk does not rise, then no one will invest in its additional production. You can, of course, invest, but the profit was very small. In reality, this money cannot significantly increase milk production, since it was too small compared to the losses from overproduction. And to really increase milk production, huge investments were required at the state level. This is what the experience of today’s Russia and all former socialist countries have shown, where they began to produce much less meat and milk.
By the way, the main increase in labor productivity in the USSR was associated not with investments by the commodity producer, but with state investments in science and technology.
Queues of the first type in the USSR were economically beneficial because they allowed them to save resources in conditions of uncertainty of future demand. By the way, they are also profitable in the West.
We have an excellent historical-economic experiment to test the null hypothesis with a huge statistical array of data. In place of the former socialist countries, more than 24 states arose, which ALL liquidated socialism and the Soviet regime. They acted in a variety of ways. Some, such as Poland, used shock therapy, others, such as the Czech Republic and Ukraine, acted very gradually. Therefore, there is no reason to say that these are mistakes of managers, “distortions” the right idea market”, etc.
An analysis of the state of affairs in all (!) post-socialist countries showed that when the queues were eliminated, less meat and milk began to be produced. Everywhere . Amazing, right? For that fought for it and ran. This is about the efficiency of the economic system.
Wait, but the original hypothesis of market economists stated that after the elimination of queues, meat production and consumption should have increased? It turns out that everything is completely wrong. It would seem that one could conclude that the queue stimulated production.
But in reality, everything is noticeably more complicated - it was not the queue that stimulated, it would have been ideal if it had not existed at all. It was stimulated by the Soviet Economy, with a slight imbalance of which queues arose. This is a payment for her positive traits. Under socialism there are crises, no matter what Marxists claim, and the indicator of socialist crises is a queue. With a slight distortion, this is a queue of the first type; in serious crises, queues of the second type arise - this is weak side Soviet System, although production is not disrupted unless it is artificially disrupted. This is the strength of the planned Soviet System.
Just like social tension, crime, decline in morality, mass ruin with a corresponding wave of social collisions - this is the price to pay for the pleasure of having a “free” market.
I may be accused of idealizing the queue. This is wrong. I experienced first-hand all the delights of standing in queues. Did you ever stand in line during Soviet times, you asked me more than once? Yes, I personally stood there many times - I had to transport sausage and other products from Moscow to Ivanovo. The impressions are unforgettable, but not at all terrible, as they now want to imagine. The queue is a whole layer of culture.
But why it was impossible to organize a Swedish system with numbers - it was elementary to do this - remained unclear to me. At one time it seemed strange to me why it was so difficult to come up with a system of paper numbers. Although, by and large, why is this system with number plates and digital displays fundamentally better than the Soviet one? A little more expensive, that's all. And its “advantages” are visible only in short queues. If there are a lot of people, where will they sit and walk? - there will still be a crowd. In the Soviet line, it was also not necessary to stand with your head buried in the back of the person in front. If there were benches, you could sit. You could get in line and go for a walk.
All this most likely could have been organized in the USSR, but they never got around to it. The culture of queuing had to be developed. Trading by orders could greatly help with this and it developed rapidly. The industry of packaging goods also developed... But then the urgent need arose for the ruling elite not to solve problems, but to make money from the “drain” of their own country.
Now to the question that it was allegedly impossible to “get” the necessary products in the USSR. This is an absolute lie - there was an alternative: meat was in the store for 2 rubles, in the smoke shop for 3.5 rubles, and in the market, for example, in Ivanovo, 4 rubles. There were shops made to order. There you could buy to order, but pay 30% on top. Buy without queues - no problem! Finally, meat, like milk, could be eaten without waiting in line in any Soviet canteen. Although it was more expensive there than in the store - from 25 to 50%. For children, special funds were allocated to schools for meat and milk, and they received it in quite large quantities. For infants, milk was distributed through dairy kitchens. Milk and meat have always been allocated to nursing mothers... Naturally, there was always the opportunity to buy it in a co-op trade or on the market. I emphasize: always.
So the "hungry, unnourished children" argument is just a dirty lie. 100% This looks especially disgusting against the background of the fact that in today’s “Russia,” according to official data from the Ministry of Defense, every third of the conscripts (yesterday’s schoolchildren) “suffers from serious underweight,” that is, simply put, dystrophy. I affirm, as a doctor who worked in the USSR, that there were no dystrophies there. At all.
It may seem that the author considers the Soviet distribution system ideal. No, that's not true. I think Soviet economic system much more effective and fair than all others, including the Western model. We just need to take the best from the Soviet system, take into account its shortcomings and mistakes and move forward. It is quite possible that in the future the distribution system may work differently altogether. If New Russia manages to break through into a new post-industrial era, then large megacities will apparently be disbanded and resettled, and a significant part of primary production will be produced locally and there will be no great need for our usual method of distribution. Moreover, no one will incite consumer desires with advertising and similar effects on the brain.
A planned economy also eliminates queues and often more effectively than a market economy. Under Soviet rule, the queue was an operational regulatory mechanism. A market economy has the advantage of speed of response, but it is incomparably more expensive than a planned one.
There were many options for neutralizing the negative impact of queues, but the worst way out was deliberately chosen - a transition to a much less economically efficient and immoral capitalist market, which was implemented in today's Russia and the former socialist countries.
S. Mironin
REFERENCES
1. (see the first version) http://vif2ne.ru/nvz/forum/0/co/217465.htm
2. Heine P. Economic way of thinking. www.libertarium.ru/libertarium/lib_thinking
3. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978STIN...8016549A
4. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1872/
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6. McConnell, K. P. and Brew, S. L. 2007. Economics. M. Infra-M.
7. http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle_base.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/integratedsystemstalin.html
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11. Mironin S. 2005. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1461/
There are very few studies on the problem of queues in the world, and in Russia there are virtually none. Yes, actually, why are they needed? The solution seems obvious: “There is a line, open another cash register, put a cashier there.” However, the situation is changing, retailers’ margins are no longer the same, customers are dear to them, but staff are even more expensive, because each employee needs to be paid a salary.
Oddly enough, the first to speak about the need for automated solutions to combat queues in Russia was small and medium business, and not at all large networks that care about high technology in the sales area.
It was small companies that approached us with the question of whether we could create a technology to control the formation of queues at retail outlets. And so it turned out that we investigated the problem of the emergence and movement of queues, and at the same time identified and confirmed many very interesting facts.
Fact 1: Shoppers are predisposed to create queues.
When one of the largest international chains, H&M, entered the Russian market, its top management was proud of the queues. While talking about H&M, the network showed photos of huge queues in Japan. It would seem that such negative information could scare off buyers. However, no.
Each of us likes to buy the same things as others. If there are people somewhere, then we will like it there too. This is psychology. Who wants to go to an empty store or a deserted cafe?
And when we take a quick glance around the sales floor with purchases in our hands, we often unknowingly stand at the very checkout counter where there are already people, but we simply don’t notice the empty one.
Fact 2. When choosing a cash register intuitively, the buyer is almost always mistaken
Most people are right-handed, and this affects their thinking. American researchers have proven that right-handed people intuitively prefer to stand on the right and go to the right. I'm not a brain researcher, but our observation of trading floors stores fully confirmed this feature of people's behavior.
The left cash register is often empty, and the queue is always longer at the right one. A single queue for all cash registers at once - good way solutions to this problem.
In addition, when choosing a checkout, the buyer almost always chooses one that moves slowly but smoothly, rather than one that moves faster but jerkily. Which is understandable, because the buyer does not have time to watch the cash registers.
By the way, a smaller amount of goods in the baskets in front is also not a panacea; the process of people moving is more inhibited by interaction with the cashier and payment than by scanning goods. Cash accepting machines, which are practiced in Russia by Auchan and Perekrestok, are a good way to increase the throughput of cash registers.
Fact 3. The behavior of buyers in a queue is similar to the maneuvers of motorists on the road: traffic jams are created by “checkers” and “curbsiders”
It's no secret that motorists themselves are partly to blame for traffic jams: the sidewalkers move forward, slowing down traffic from behind, as do those who decide to change lanes, deciding that another one is going faster.
The speed of the flow during maneuvers is reduced. The same thing happens in line: those who stood at the checkout for a long time and decided to run across end up delaying both themselves and those around them. Those who stood in line and then came up with a full cart are not worth talking about.
Fact 4. The buyer experiences negative emotions after an average of 6 minutes 30 seconds of being in line
The buyer is inconsistent in his decisions: he likes places where there are a lot of people, but does not want to stand for a long time. His loyalty to the store begins to drop sharply around the seventh minute of standing in line.
After about 6 minutes 30 seconds, the buyer has the following thought: “Next time I’ll think about whether to come here or not.” Our simple survey showed this. The critical threshold, after which some customers leave the store, occurs at the tenth minute of waiting.
However, the waiting time is different for different stores. People are willing to wait longer with a cart in a hypermarket, and less in non-food retail. It is clear that it is easier to put a couple of T-shirts or sneakers back and go somewhere else. And the buyer’s mood largely depends on the store’s assortment; it’s not a shame to stand for something exclusive.
At the same time, store management, as a rule, notices the problem of queues in the store no earlier than a year and a half after the opening of the outlet. The presence of a large number of customers is initially perceived as a plus, but they begin to think about solutions to increase checkout traffic much later.
Fact 5: Retailers prefer to entertain queues rather than liquidate them.
To be fair, it must be said that in saturated markets there are fewer queues. At the same time, many large Western chains attended to this problem much earlier than the Russian ones (they introduced, in particular, a single queue and payment machines).
However, now one of the most common ways to combat negative consequences Queues in Europe and America become entertainment for the buyer:
- Firstly, the mirrors at the cash registers (the buyer is busy looking at himself and is not too angry),
- Secondly, a TV with music channels or news.
Fact 6. Store employees are not interested in solving the queue problem
Often, the scale of the problem of queues at a retail outlet may simply not be clear to the business owner. It often happens that your main task store management sees cost optimization and is unlikely to waste time counting the number of people in line and customers who have left. After all, the results of such a study will lead to the fact that the store manager will have to explain to the owner the need to hire additional staff, which does not fit in with the course towards optimization.
In practice, this usually leads to the fact that the business owner finds out about the problem only some time after it appeared, being in the store during rush hour.
Fact 7. In Russia the service is better, but people are also more patient
Residents of Russia are distinguished by great patience, and they seem to be accustomed to queues here. But this only applies to the older generation. The overwhelming number of people in Russia, especially the younger generation, categorically do not like and do not accept queues.
Oddly enough, it is in Russia that retail offers customers better service than in Europe. Most stores are open late, some even around the clock, they do not have days off or lunch breaks. A European is no stranger to the fact that if he is late at work, he will no longer be able to get to the supermarket in the evening, and on Sunday everything will be closed.
And life in most European capitals is more relaxed than in Moscow. They don’t want to wait and they can’t, so we see a free niche in the capital’s market that will allow us to implement and bring to market automated solutions that allow us to control the number of queues at the cash register and, if necessary, call in additional personnel.
Fact 8. Small and medium-sized businesses will be ahead of large chains in the fight against queues
As a rule, large retailers first introduce any technology in Russia, be it self-service checkouts, security systems or staff motivation. However, as we see, in this case, it is medium-sized businesses that are most interested in developing automated technologies that allow them to track queues at the cash registers. At his request, we developed a queue detector that allows you to count customers in a queue and signals that it is time to open another cash register.
Demand for such technologies has arisen from small chains of convenience stores and non-chain retail outlets. And there is an explanation for this: small shops are not always able to withstand price competition with networks. At the same time, expensive video analytics systems existing on the market are not available to them. But customer loyalty won thanks to good service and speed of purchases are their real competitive advantage.
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Publication date: 12/01/2016
Full name in Russian:
Limited Liability Company "Insales Rus"
Abbreviated name in Russian:
LLC "Insales Rus"
Name in English:
InSales Rus Limited Liability Company (InSales Rus LLC)
Legal address:
125319, Moscow, st. Akademika Ilyushina, 4, building 1, office 11
Mailing address:
107078, Moscow, st. Novoryazanskaya, 18, building 11-12, BC “Stendhal”
INN: 7714843760 Checkpoint: 771401001
Bank details:
Lines at the checkout counter are a pressing problem for many retail store owners. Customers complain, leave, abandon purchases without paying for them, and you can be sure: now they are unlikely to return to your store. But don't despair! The online magazine “Business.ru” provides several basic rules for “fighting” queues at a retail establishment.
Losing patience: what's bad about queues?
British researchers have calculated that the average European resident spends an average of about a year in store queues! Also, according to public opinion polls, more than 40% of modern buyers admit that the presence of a queue in a store can be a good reason to “pass by” a retail establishment and change their intention to make a purchase there. IN modern society, when every minute of time counts for each of us, waiting in line is a heavy burden for every person.
Professional automation of goods accounting in retail. Organize your store
Take control of sales and track indicators for cashiers, points and organizations in real time from any convenient place where there is an Internet connection. Formulate the needs of outlets and purchase goods in 3 clicks, print labels and price tags with barcodes, making life easier for yourself and your employees. Build a customer base using a ready-made loyalty system, use a flexible system of discounts to attract customers during off-peak hours. Operate like a big store, but without the expense of specialists and server equipment today, and start earning more tomorrow.
Almost 90% of people surveyed admit that they prefer to avoid visiting stores where the number of people standing in line seems significant to them. Competent business owner retail must realize the importance of ensuring that there are no queues at all in his store, or that the crowding of customers at the checkout or in departments is minimal. Nine minutes in line is enough for the average customer to change his mind about making a purchase in a store! What follows from this? – If you want to lose your client, “accumulate” queues!
It turns out that a queue of three people is psychologically comfortable for any customer, and anything longer will cause negative reactions in customers. This means that any crowd of buyers above the norm of three people requires intervention. Long waits at the checkout counters cause complaints and dissatisfaction among customers; they leave the store without waiting their turn and without paying for their purchases, which means you can be sure: a person who values his time will not return to this store.
Queues always evoke negative associations for each of us, and since fewer and fewer customers will visit your store due to constant queues, the loss of turnover will become more and more noticeable. Experts advise calculating the optimal number of cash registers for customer service based on the calculation - one cash register per 150 square meters of store area.
In order to competently “deal” with the consequences – queues in a retail store – you first need to understand the reasons for their occurrence.
Reasons for the formation of queues
An experienced marketer will be able to determine the reason for the formation of queues easily, since there are several main reasons.
Poor quality of service
As you know, the longest queues in stores appear in the evening, when most buyers rush to the stores to make necessary purchases. It is during such hours that a significant number of customers accumulate at the cash registers, most of whom are in a hurry. A “sluggish” cashier can be seen with the naked eye: he is not interested in quickly serving the store’s customers, he carries out all operations slowly, as if reluctantly. Naturally, visitors to your store will not be satisfied with the quality of such service, which means they will not want to come back here again. If the cashier of your store is elderly, then it is natural that he will serve customers more slowly than a young employee.
Also, the reason may lie in the fact that the cashier is a novice employee of a retail enterprise, and operations with a cash register have not yet reached the point of automation. To work at the cash register, it is necessary to choose stress-resistant employees who can work with any queue, can find mutual language with each client, fulfill all his requests. In any case, the speed of service at the checkout directly depends on the quality of the cashier’s work, and therefore this aspect should be given special attention. Slowness or fussiness of a cashier only causes irritation in store visitors, and you should try to avoid this.
Equipment malfunction
The reason for slow customer service in the store's checkout area may lie in a malfunction or poor performance of the equipment. For example, when a POS terminal - a device for accepting plastic cards for payment - takes a long time to process a request from a bank, then not only the card owner, but also all store visitors standing in line have to wait for a “response”. Check the serviceability of the cash register, POS terminal, and barcode reader so that this equipment does not “slow down” the customer service process.
Incorrect technological layout of the checkout area
More than 15% of the total time that a customer spends in a store is spent in the checkout area, which means it should be as convenient as possible for visitors. To do this, it must be initially correctly designed, and the equipment - shelving, display cases, cash machine– must be correctly positioned. It is known that the flow of customers in the checkout area of the store is always intense, there is a lot of turnover, which means that the racks in this area must be stable so that customers cannot accidentally break or drop them. Take care of the comfort of customers in the checkout area - they should not be cramped, they should not be “sandwiched” between the shelves. If the store has a large crowd of people at the checkout, try to provide an air cooling system, especially in the hot season.
Comprehensive trade automation at minimum costs
We take a regular computer, connect any fiscal registrar and install the Business Ru Kassa application. As a result, we get an economical analogue of a POS terminal like in a large store with all its functions. We enter goods with prices into the cloud service Business.Ru and start working. For everything about everything - maximum 1 hour and 15-20 thousand rubles. for the fiscal registrar.
Saving store space
Often businessmen try to expand retail space store by reducing the checkout area. This should not be allowed, as this entails “crowddom” at the cash registers, which means that even the “normative” three people in line will look like a crowd of people from the outside, which will certainly scare off visitors. Do not skimp on the area of the checkout area of your store, since the main thing is the comfortable presence of customers in it.
In order to minimize queues in your store, pay attention to all of the above reasons for their occurrence, approach the issue in a comprehensive manner: change the layout of the checkout area, make the passage to it convenient, accessible, spacious; Organize the work of the service personnel properly, if necessary, conduct training or “educational” conversations and remember that it is the absence of a queue in front of the checkout that directly affects and contributes to the client’s creation of a good impression of the store and stimulates his desire to make a purchase.
How to deal with queues at the store?
1. Introduction of self-service checkouts
We have already discussed the benefits and significant positive effect of installing self-service checkouts in our article Self-service checkouts: is it worth implementing? In general, experts recognize the effectiveness of this method of “combat” queues in retail stores. By installing self-service cash registers along with regular cash registers, an entrepreneur will help to “cure” his retail enterprise from constant queues and crowds of customers. Of course, not every store visitor is ready to use a self-checkout; most often the younger generation uses such modern technological capabilities. But there is no doubt that the “hurriest” shoppers will not want to stand in line, but will prefer to pay for their purchases at the self-service checkout.
In addition, self-checkouts are more compact and take up several times less space than traditional checkouts. They help increase the throughput of the checkout center and reduce queues during so-called “rush hours” in the store.
2. Employee motivation
If the reason for the formation of queues in your retail business lies in the sluggishness of cashiers and their reluctance to quickly serve customers, do not rush to “say goodbye” to careless employees, because finding a good cashier today is not easy. The right solution here would be to properly motivate your employees to work at the cash register. For example, if a cashier does not see the difference between whether he serves 5 customers per hour or 20, then such an employee has no incentive to speed up the process of serving customers.
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