Privacy trumps speed when it comes to purchasing stigmatized products, new research shows.
- Self-checkout popular for consumers buying health and personal care items
- It may not be more convenient but buyers value privacy over speed sometimes
- The findings add nuance to the debate over self-checkout lanes
A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign sheds light on a quiet consumer shift thats taken place alongside the rise of automation in retail: people are more likely to purchase potentially embarrassing health and personal care items at self-checkout kiosks than at traditional cashier lanes.
Researchers found that sales of stigmatized products like condoms, pregnancy tests, and hemorrhoid cream rose significantly after the introduction of self-checkout systems in grocery stores. The findings suggest that eliminating face-to-face interaction at the register reduces the social discomfort that can come with buying sensitive items.
People are trading speed for privacy.
When you're at a cashier register, the cashier sees everything you purchase. When you're at self-checkout, you can control what others see, said study co-author Rebecca Taylor, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at Illinois. You might be more likely to buy embarrassing items.
The study, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, is based on a large dataset of scanner transactions collected from a grocery store chain in the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area during the rollout of self-checkout between 2008 and 2011.
Sales bump for certain products
The research team first compared sales data before and after self-checkout was introduced in 30 stores. They discovered a noticeable uptick in purchases of condoms, bowel treatments, and yeast infection products when shoppers had access to self-checkout. However, sales of items like menstrual products remained flat, possibly because they are less avoidable or more commonly purchased.
This suggests a difference between products people need no matter what, and those they may otherwise postpone or skip if it means interacting with a cashier, Taylor noted.
Privacy over convenience
A second part of the study looked at more than three years of sales data from 51 stores, focusing on transactions made during the busiest shopping hours. Although self-checkout accounted for just 19% of overall purchases, that figure jumped to 42% for condoms and 43% for pregnancy tests.
Even when buying fresh produce or bulky items which are more cumbersome to handle without assistance shoppers overwhelmingly preferred self-checkout when their cart included sensitive products.
People are trading speed for privacy, Taylor said. Cashiers scan items much faster, and self-checkout transactions are on average 100 seconds longer. Still, many customers accept the inconvenience for the discretion self-checkout provides.
Rethinking the self-checkout rollback
As some major retailers reassess the value of self-checkout with several reversing course and reintroducing more cashier lanes this study adds nuance to the debate. While shoppers may appreciate human interaction for some purchases, automation clearly fulfills an important need for privacy.
There are products like floral items, fresh produce, and large dog food bags where customers prefer the help of a cashier, Taylor said. So, keeping both options available is likely to maximize consumer welfare.
Posted: 2025-07-22 21:56:30
