The Overworked Consumer : Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy

過度勞累的消費者研究自助服務技術在美國經濟中日益使用促使美國人免費在工作環境中執行各種任務的方式來促進美國人的忙碌和過度勞累的感覺。該書著重於零售食品行業中採用自助結賬通道，描述了自助服務技術如何在工作和休閒之間的界限日益模糊的經濟中改變服務的含義。

大型企業只是便宜又懶惰，是傾向於將工作自動化和外包給無薪消費者而不是提高工資，還是自助服務及其“自己動手”的精神，是對消費者更快、更輕鬆地購買商品需求的回應和服務？購物者通過自助結賬通道時會得到什麼？它真的比收銀員通道快嗎？還是僅僅只是一次虛幻的提速，就是要分散他們對他們正在執行無償工作認識的注意力，而無意中參加新零售實驗的參與者，其起源可以追溯到現代超市的發明？

那對工作的影響又如何呢？這是收銀員和類似工作形式收銀台的終點，還是對自動化的焦慮過高？為了回答這些問題，作者將讀者帶到區域連鎖超市SuperFood中，通過對經理、員工和顧客的廣泛採訪以及一系列示例、零售研究和統計數據來將事實與虛構分開，以找出問題所在。實際上發生在商店中。在談到兩個雜貨店的警告故事後，作者認為零售的未來仍未確定，這意味著購物者仍有時間決定他們是否真的想“自己動手做”，買者自負。

The Overworked Consumer examines how the growing use of self-service technology in the U.S. economy has contributed to Americans' feelings of busyness and overwork by asking them to perform a variety of tasks in work-like settings for free. Focusing on the adoption of self-checkout lanes in the retail food industry, the book describes how self-service technology is changing the meaning of service in an economy where the boundaries between work and leisure are becoming increasingly blurred.

Are big businesses simply being cheap and lazy, preferring to automate and outsource work to unpaid consumers instead of raising wages, or is self-service and its do-it-yourself ethos a response to consumers' demands for faster, easier ways of buying goods and services? And what exactly are shoppers getting when they go through the self-checkout lane? Is it really faster than the cashier lane or just another illusory speed-up meant to distract them from the realization that they are performing unpaid work, unwitting participants in a new retail experiment whose roots can be traced back to the very invention of the modern supermarket?

And what about the effect on jobs; is this the end of the checkout line for cashiers and similar forms of work, or are such anxieties over automation overstated? To answer these questions, the author takes readers inside SuperFood, a regional supermarket chain, drawing upon extensive interviews with managers, staff, and customers as well as an array of examples, retail studies, and statistics to separate fact from fiction and figure out what is actually happening in stores. Concluding with a cautionary tale of two grocers, the author suggests the future of retailing is still undetermined, meaning shoppers still have time to decide whether or not they really want to "do-it-yourself". Caveat emptor.

Christopher K. Andrews  (Auther) 

Publisher:Lexington Books 

 ISBN:978-1498543804