For some, grocery store self-checkout kiosks are a mundane part of everyday life. Many appreciate the efficiency they offer - less waiting, fewer interactions and, seemingly, more autonomy.
Few ask what price we pay for that convenience. That's the question Business Management professor Mathieu Lajante explores in a recent research paper examining the hidden cost of new technologies in critical sectors like the grocery industry.
The research article, Customer value extraction vs. co-creation at self-service checkout, was authored in collaboration with TMU Management PhD student Mariam Hamam, and Marketing Professor Dewi Tojib at Monash University in Australia.
Lajante, who is also the director of the emoLab, a neuroscience-based business management research centre at the Ted Rogers School of Management, says that while self-checkouts aren't going anywhere, the technologies emerging today go far beyond labour displacement - with far-reaching implications.
"Automated checkouts are transforming the dynamic between customers and companies in extractive ways, and leading to more control over customer interactions, while increasing data extraction and surveillance," says Lajante. "The adoption of these machines is also profoundly changing the way labour is viewed and valued."
He adds that the integration of AI risks magnifying these changes in ways that put profits and data ahead of people and social responsibility.
Companies are investing heavily in technologies that treat labour as a problem to be solved rather than a human resource, says Lajante. These tools are designed to drive efficiency and boost profits, generating value that rarely translates into higher wages for workers, reinvestment in staff or lower prices for consumers.
The restructuring of service work
Loblaws employees are largely unionized in Canada, primarily through United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW) Canada, which works to protect the rights of workers in this important sector.
When a grocery chain adopts self-checkout kiosks en masse, it saves not only on wages but also on pension and EI contributions. The shift also undermines labour unions and compounds Canada's rising youth unemployment rate.
The UFCW has reported that in an effort to normalize' self-checkouts and cut labour costs, some companies deliberately understaff cash tills, restrict cashier access to cash-only transactions and require employees to redirect customers to self-checkout lines.
"This reality aligns with the concept of predatory value extraction'," says Lajante about corporate strategies that benefit shareholders while disinvesting in labour, infrastructure and a genuine sense of social responsibility.
Lajante warns that framing unpaid services as working together' and consumer empowerment' can make it seem like everyone benefits equally. In reality one side is extracting additional profits and holds more power. Inequality is less visible. This is why it's important to look more closely at who really benefits in these situations.
The myth of consumer empowerment
Lajante says new grocery technology is creating a new kind of labour arrangement where service work once done by employees is increasingly transferred to customers. This creates value that may not get passed onto consumers.
Companies not only save on labour costs, they create opportunities, through new technologies, to collect data on spending habits, Lajante points out. "The price we pay for increased efficiency is the platformization of the market," he says.
It's a subtle shift that moves more everyday tasks onto digital platforms, and more value into corporate hands.
"Technologies have turned consumers into prosumers' - meaning they are both producers and consumers, conditioned to produce free labour and data in exchange for resources like time," Lajante says. "It's not dissimilar to online apps that use the data generated by users to turn more profits."
Every time a consumer uses a self-checkout, navigates an app, sorts through AI recommendations or shares preferences, they generate behavioural data that strengthens targeting systems and increases company value - value that is seldom acknowledged in corporate earnings and value reporting.
"Traditionally, customers were passive buyers. But in today's platform economy, they actively produce value and are a part of the value chain."
Mathieu Lajante, Director of the emoLab, Business Management Professor
Data use risks
It's important to hold major grocery store chains accountable for how the data they collect is used - particularly given their significant control over pricing and market conditions.
An investigation released in December 2025 by Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union uncovered unfair algorithmic pricing tactics.
They found that Instacart, a grocery delivery and pick-up app, used its platform to conduct price experiments on app users - often without their knowledge - allowing grocery retailers to charge different prices to different shoppers for the same items.
This means your previous shopping habits factor into the price you are asked to pay today, and could be more than your neighbour would pay.
Brave new world
Technological solutions to human labour reinforce the idea that labour should be treated as a cost rather than an important aspect of a healthy economy, and that groceries should be optimized for corporate gain.
In service industries, says Lajante, the myth that companies and consumers benefit equally begins to break down under pressures to cut costs, increase efficiency and satisfy shareholders. The convenience of self-checkout can mask those trade-offs.
"These systems aren't really about innovation or collaboration between companies and consumers," he says. "They're about maximizing profits while weakening social norms of reciprocity and responsibility."
