Supermarket of the future: 80 percent of citizens want to be served by people

Even though delivery services and online offers increasingly seem to make a trip to the supermarket superfluous, around two-thirds of Germans cannot imagine doing without them. This was the conclusion of the "Retail Radar 2018" study, in which 1,000 German citizens were surveyed by the start-up Responsive Acoustics (ReAct), which specializes in sound and communication concepts.

The respondents said they would not want to do without personal advice, and three out of four citizens were firmly against "ghost supermarkets" without staff. "As our study further shows, the desire for personal advice in the supermarket is not a question of age," says ReAct founder Wilbert Hirsch, "because even in the group of 18- to 34-year-olds, more than 70% of respondents reject a supermarket without staff." Even two-thirds of the study participants, who describe themselves as "compulsory shoppers" and for whom shopping is more of a frustration than a pleasure, appreciate personal advice. The clear vote against "ghost supermarkets" is not based on a general hostility to technology. Around half of those surveyed were open to innovations such as checkout-free shopping or navigation through the supermarket by smartphone. "In contrast, the world of many supermarkets with their droning loudspeaker announcements seems like something from another era," says retail expert Hirsch. "In addition, this form of communication is ineffective, often fails to reach the right contact person and also makes for unnecessary or excessively long distances."