Checkout Has Changed. We Asked Shoppers What They Think

Retail is changing quickly, and checkout is changing with it.

It used to be pretty easy to picture checkout: a cash wrap, a register, maybe a long conveyor belt with someone scanning while another person bagged your groceries. That still exists, but it is only one version of checkout now.

Today, checkout might mean scanning items with your own phone as you move through the store. It might be an associate walking with you, building the basket on a tablet. You might start online, come into the store to ask questions and finish the purchase with a salesperson. Or you might begin a return at home and simply complete it when you get to the store.

Checkout hasn't gone away. It has spread across the shopping journey.

And that is what makes it interesting right now. Many of the biggest conversations heading into NRF 2027 — AI agents, trust and security, biometrics, payments, retail media, automation and the role of the associate — eventually have to work for a real shopper in one of these moments.

So we asked 500 shoppers what they actually think.

The first wave looks broadly at checkout and several of the questions retailers are already wrestling with. Then we will use what we learn to shape a second wave, digging further into the areas that matter most and connecting them back to the major conversations happening around NRF.

The goal isn't to predict every answer before we get there. It's to give retailers a better starting point: what shoppers are telling us, where the friction and opportunity may be, and what technologies and solutions may be worth exploring when everyone gets to New York.

The first results are in. Over the next several weeks, we'll start sharing what we found.

— Cambridge Retail Advisors