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As more and more shoppers take to their smartphones, Argos has opened its first self-service digital store, bringing a checkout-free shopping experience to customers.
Argos’s first self-service store in Sainsbury’s Dulwich store in south London sees customers pay at the same tablet they use to browse the catalogue’s 20,000 products – removing the need to visit a separate checkout area to pay – before picking up their orders at new collection pods.
Argos said: ‘This quicker and more convenient payment process frees up store colleagues to be on hand to help customers at the Pay@Browse areas and bring products to collection pods. The Pay@Browse areas will also include tills to support anyone who wishes to pay with cash or cards.’
The launch comes as the retailer announced the news that it had reached over £2 billion sales generated through customers shopping on smartphones and tablets. Argos claims it was the first UK retailer to reach £1 billion sales from mobile devices.
Customers shopping on smartphones and tablets now account for more than 70% of all Argos online sales – making it the retailer’s fastest growing channel – and across Sainsbury’s Group, a total of £4.7 billion sales are now generated online.
Sainsbury’s Argos chief executive officer John Rogers said: “Having launched nearly 300 Argos stores in Sainsbury’s supermarkets, we’re making it easier and more convenient for customers to do more of their shopping under one roof.
“We’re continuing to test innovative new formats and, with the launch of our first self-service digital store, we’re offering shoppers a speedier way to pay and giving our colleagues more time to serve and help customers. We’re excited to hear what shoppers think of our latest in-store innovation.”
In March, Argos launched a visual search service in the Argos iOS app, which enables customers to shop for homewares and furniture using images on their smartphones.
And last September Argos became the first UK retailer to offer a shopping service via the Google Assistant platform with the launch of Voice Shop, which enables customers to reserve Argos products using voice technology.
Sainsbury’s was the first UK supermarket to offer till-free shopping alongside standard checkouts in August last year.
