ofc, paying people is the highest expense almost everywhere
Comment on They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
Mniot@programming.dev 7 hours agoThe companies won’t pay the 10% out of their own pocket, as they most likely couldn’t. At least here in Germany, supermarket margins are pretty thin.
This doesn’t pass a quick reasoning check:
- Self-checkout machines cost the store capital investment (they introduce some new technology, there is a larger number of devices)
- Self-checkout machines cost the store operating budget (more devices means more parts to be serviced)
- Stores have added significant numbers of self-checkout machines
So the stores must be getting better margins at self-checkout than at human-checkout, or they wouldn’t introduce it.
rapchee@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
sascha_isagirlname@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Yeah, they make more profit by introducing self-checkout, but I doubt It’d be 10% or more. I may be wrong. If there is any data on that, I’d love to see it.
But even if they can afford to lower all prices by 10%, I can’t imagine they would just take the financial hit. Why wouldn’t they compensate by increasing prices?
To me it doesn’t make sense in any scenario.
If you believe in the free market, this would lead to nothing, as supermarkets are already providing their goods for the lowest reasonable prices, because of competition.
If you believe that supermarkets are engaging in price collusion, there is nothing that would stop them from just all increasing their prices further.