This story is part of our collaboration with Retail Brew on investing in changing consumer habits.

In a distant, forgotten epoch called the early 2000s, self-checkout machines, those infuriating devices in seemingly every grocery store waiting to inform you there’s “an unexpected item in the bagging area,” seemed like a good, even great, idea.

They’d bring retail stores into the modern age: Customers would whiz through lines, companies would save on labor costs, and everything would be new and shiny and good and perfect. Lately, though, they’ve started to look like a vestige of the boom years.

Dollar General, Target, Walmart, and Costco, among others, have all either pulled back on or tweaked their self-checkout process recently. And in California, there’s a newly proposed bill on the table that could force some stores to close self-checkout lanes without adequate staffing.

There’s just one issue: Retailers spent the start of the 2000s convincing people this was a worthy and effective technology. Largely, it wasn’t. But dialing back on a botched tech experiment is a delicate art, and for CFOs managing the cost of the pullback, getting out of this mess intact requires rethinking what could have been.

But instead of just jumping on board and pulling back from self-checkout because everyone else is, retail CFOs should run an extensive cost-benefit analysis on existing self-checkout technology, experts argue, because ultimately, it’s all a return on investment calculation.

For more on the cost of withdrawing self-checkout, click here.—NP

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Well, this is gonna be awkward at the next board of directors function.

Company executives and board members have diverging views on what they view as the most critical areas of expertise for boards, and a hefty amount (92%) of execs think at least one of their board members should be replaced, according to a new survey from PwC.

Less than a third (30%) of executives rated their boards’ overall performance as either “excellent” or “good,” the survey also found. PwC noted in a report that the survey findings could suggest an underlying issue: “a perceived gap in the board’s ability to pivot and adapt amid the whirlwind of rapidly evolving strategic challenges and business risks.”

Executives identified industry, regulatory/public policy, and environmental/sustainability as their most important areas of expertise that their boards possess. Directors thought differently: They said expertise in finance, risk management, and operations were most important. Execs also had a clear wish list of the skills they want to see added to their boards in the next three to five years, with the top three areas of expertise being environmental/sustainability, artificial intelligence (including generative AI), and IT/digital.

For more on the split between executives and boards, click here.—AZ

You’ve seen them. They lurk unsuspectingly in supermarkets, in front-page headlines. They live among us, they are us: the “inflation-weary shopper.”

And finally, finally, we’re getting a small break from one retailer. Target is slashing prices on approximately 5,000 products by the end of this summer in an effort to keep those ever-elusive “inflation-weary shoppers” inside their stores.

Of the thousands of planned price cuts,1,500 popular items have already been made cheaper. In all, Target anticipates “these price reductions will collectively save consumers millions of dollars this summer.”

The price cuts include name brands, like Clorox, Huggies, and Aveeno, as well as Target’s brands. Exact changes will vary based on city, but Target said, by way of example, that a product like Clorox Scented Wipes would go from $5.79 to $4.99 in cities like Phoenix, Minneapolis, or Baltimore.

"We know consumers are feeling pressured to make the most of their budget, and Target is here to help them save more," Rick Gomez, Target’s EVP and chief food, essentials and beauty officer, said in a press release.

Click here to read how some companies are approaching inflation weary consumers.—NP

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