What is a trade queue. Small business versus online cash registers: briefly about the demands of the protesters and the reaction of the authorities. Full name in Russian

How often did it happen that you ran into the store for a change, and when you went to the checkout, you saw a huge queue? In such cases, there is no need to be upset. You just need to carefully study the queues and get into the right one. Online magazine Factinteres helps you choose the fastest queue.

Queue where customers have full baskets

At first glance, this advice sounds counterintuitive. However, statistics think otherwise. Why do you need to queue up where customers have full baskets? Dan Meyer, a researcher of the future of mathematics and technology, head of the academic department at Desmos, will help us to answer this question.

Approaching the checkout, the cashier greets us, asks about the need to buy a package, breaks through the goods, calculates and says goodbye. Tasks without punching goods take on average 41 seconds. On average, 3 seconds are spent for each unit of the broken product.

Let's say one person has 100 items in their cart. It will take approximately 6 minutes to service this customer. And in the next line there are 4 people, 20 goods for each. This line will take about 7 minutes to service. Imagine the difference in time if the queue becomes several times larger.

Go to the left box office

Some research suggests that right-handers (and most people are right-handed) are more likely to go to the right cash register than to the left. This is because most people are right-handed.

Choose female cashiers

No sexism, just statistics! Many studies show that a girl breaks through the product faster and does not waste time on unnecessary movements. By the way, if the cashier girl likes to recommend products or talk to customers while punching through, then it's still better to refuse this line.

Study shoppers and their carts

When choosing a queue, you need to carefully study the person and the goods inside his basket. For example, an elderly person may delay the queue because there may be difficulties in paying, looking at bills and speed of movement.

Look into the baskets of customers in the queue. For example, a cashier will knock out 10 identical bottles of water much faster than 10 different bottles of water. Try to avoid shoppers whose baskets are full of various vegetables, fruits, etc. Such goods require additional weighing time.

Try to choose a queue that stands for several cashiers

Many studies show that the serpentine line (this is the name of this service method) is the most effective. That is why this method of service can be found at airports or banks. Such a system allows a person to get rid of unnecessary choice, because now you don't have to choose which line to go to.

Unfortunately, large stores do not often decide to take such a step to create a serpentine line. Why? It's simple. No store owner wants to have a huge line at his store all the time, stretching across the hall. Therefore, it is easier to create many parallel lines.

Don't get in a crooked line

Research shows that a curved line lasts much longer than a straight line. The fact is that the cashier simply does not see the scale of the accumulated queue and does not accelerate much. Therefore, such a line often lasts longer. By the way, do not queue if the cashier cannot see the entire queue.

How to speed up the process?

• Try to put the goods on the tape with a barcode to the cashier
• When buying clothes, remove all the tags and hangers of the store yourself
• Divide products into groups. This will allow the cashier to serve you faster.

Finally, it should be said that most of the time we exaggerate the waiting time. Many studies support this. On average, we turn out to be 36% wrong. Therefore, next time, follow the advice and calmly wait for your turn.

"The most harmful thing is not ignorance at all, but the knowledge of a hell of a lot
things that are actually wrong "(F. Knight, economist).

INTRODUCTION

I wrote this article because the concept of “queue” became a weapon in the ideological struggle of the enemies of the “USSR” project.

In recent years in Russia, and not only in Russia, heated debates have flared up more and more often over whether "the Russian people did the right thing by abandoning socialism." Leaving aside the question of whether the people really "refused" or whether this decision was made for them, and consider this, without a doubt, a bright bogey of "queues", which liberal-market people triumphantly brandish, presenting the queue as a blatant example of the "inefficiency of the Soviet system." Under the pressure of very obvious facts, they often admit that they say, yes, they lived well, but the queues spoiled everything and therefore “such a country is not needed”. At the same time, dishonest people are trying to slip a line of reasoning into the layman as primitive as a felt boot: queues are a consequence of a centralized economy, a market is needed to eliminate them, and the market, in turn, is incompatible with socialism and the USSR. Next comes the conclusion about the correctness of the destruction of socialism and the destruction of a great power.

From this article, the reader will be convinced that the above "female logic" of market people is nothing more than a brazen and dishonorable manipulation that has nothing to do with economic science or just common sense.

In reality, turn, as a social, economic and organizational phenomenon, is much more complex than people try to imagine.

WHAT IS THE TURN?

It is interesting that not everyone is clearly aware that the queue has always existed in all societies, and far from only in the USSR, as they are trying to convince us. For example, it functions perfectly now in the West. There it is called the "peak-load problem" and has long been solved by theoretical economics (see, for example), and by human practice.

The idea that the market eliminates queues altogether is just a brazen fraud not so much by smart people as by cunning and dishonest people pursuing their very selfish goals. In fact, always and everywhere - the queue is evidence of the limited resource, no more and no less. Carts in the ferry, cars at traffic lights, people in the waiting room of a dentist's office or canteen are all evidence of a limited resource.

A queue is a state that occurs when servicing one customer takes longer than the time it takes for the next customer to come to a service center - a checkout, a sales outlet, a para-salon, baggage control ... In other words, a queue is a situation when the next order the service arrives earlier than the service of the previous visitor.

Everyone agrees with that. But there are two types of queues: the first - when, simply put, what they are queuing for does not end and "this" is enough for everyone, even if not immediately and the second - when "this" quickly ends and is not enough for everyone. That is, the second is a case of the so-called "deficit". Let us emphasize this point - "deficit" is a fundamentally different type of queue. Although they look the same from the outside - there is a line of people one after another.
And now, as they say, watch your hands. The fact is that "deficit" as a noticeable social phenomenon began to appear in the USSR from the end of the 70s, if not to take the period of wars. The queue of the first type has always existed - both in the USSR and in all other countries.

Ideological opponents, as a rule, argue that there were always queues in the USSR, this was an inevitable part of it, therefore ... in the USSR there was always a deficit and an ineffective economy. But this is far from the case. I will repeat once again - if you do not take the periods of wars, economic recovery and the initial period of Industrialization, the situation with queues, in general, was quite good somewhere before the 80s. That is, over the course of decades, the Soviet economy functioned successfully and supplies worked, on the whole, not bad, especially when you consider that all this happened after a series of destructive wars and in an extremely hostile environment.

We will not consider the phenomenon of "scarcity" in this article - because it is inherently completely different from a queue. "Deficit" (absence of something) can be out of turn at all. In addition, the very existence of a "deficit" does not mean the weakness of the economy, but only means incorrect distribution or other organizational and social phenomena. The second type of queue is a social barometer, no more and no less. It is an indicator of a very serious imbalance, when one has a lot, and the other has nothing. Not necessarily economic, but quite possibly a social or criminal imbalance, an indicator that law enforcement agencies can no longer restrain the pressure of criminals that have merged with the authorities.
As for the economy, in some cases the economy is effective, and in some it is not. In general, the deficit is a very great evil for public consciousness, it was not in vain that it was used to manipulate society and destroy the country.

We will also not take the Stalinist times - this is a completely different conversation, when the Stalinist economy started working as planned - without wars and forced development, then queues and shortages necessary goods just practically was not. Also, we will not take the period recent years USSR - the queues and deficits of this period should pass not through the department of the economy, but through the department of law enforcement, since they had not an economic, but a clearly planned nature of sabotage before the planned destruction of the country.

If you try to consider the phenomenon of queues in the USSR for all periods of its existence, then you get not an article, but a monograph of hundreds of pages, of little interest to the ordinary reader. In this article, we will consider the period of the "mature" USSR until the beginning of the transition period in the mid-late 70s, when the administrative elite of the Brezhnev period began to leave for another world and the country increasingly began to find itself in the hands of semi-mafia party clans, which ultimately led to to Perestroika. This was done because the Soviet System in the form in which it was planned and built, from the late 70s - early 80s began to be gradually destroyed. And we are interested in what it was by design and what advantages and disadvantages it had.

There were queues during the period under review, but as a rule, they were of the first type - due to insufficient bandwidth service points. From the point of view of the layman, it would seem that everything is nowhere easier - if customer service takes such time, then you just need to increase the number of serving nodes or service points. But the simplicity of this solution is deceiving and the treatment can easily turn out to be much worse than the "disease" itself. The point is that queues often make a lot of economic sense - they provide significant benefits, providing more profit and more optimal resource management than if you get rid of queues.

In an ideal world and in ideal conditions there should be no queue, but even then, only if the flow of customers is strictly stable in time. IN real life everything is different - the flow of customers is inconsistent, then twenty will come at the same time (for example, a bus came up), then no one at all for half a day. At the moment when the number of service orders exceeds the capacity of the serving node, a queue appears. Then, when fewer customers come up, the queue dissolves without a trace, as if it never existed. This process is repeated cyclically. For example, on a working day, as was usually the case in the USSR, there was no one in the store, and immediately after work there was a line almost to the door.

The same thing happens in any country of the world, even in the West so beloved by the "reformers" - half-hour and even hour-long queues at the supermarket on Friday and Saturday evenings are completely commonplace and, despite constant cartoons in newspapers, nothing changes there either. And it will not change. The queue is a signal of exceeding the full load of the system, lack of redundancy, but it is far from the fact that it makes sense to increase this bandwidth.

Let's make a simple reasoning - if even in the most supermarket economy the owner of the service point increases the number of staff, then there will be no queues during peak hours, but the hours when there are few customers and the staff is idle en masse will “eat up” all the profits.

In reality, the cost of wages for workers is far from everything. Here we must add an additional number of service nodes, for example, cash registers, the cost square meters, which will go not to the placement of goods, but to the cash register, as well as the cost of managers who will manage additional personnel ... Naturally, with an increase in the number of personnel, the price of the service will also increase, because the buyer pays for everything. Even without mathematical calculations, it is clear that there is a certain optimum between the queue and the downtime of personnel and equipment. It is the requirement to maximize profits that makes the owner of the diner keep his customers in line, at least occasionally, during the hot lunch hour.

Practice has shown that, in reality, it is technically impossible to organize work without queues in such a way that the required number of personnel appear at their work precisely at rush hour, although there have been attempts to solve this problem.

Now let's look at the situation through the eyes of the client. After all, he constantly chooses where to go - where there is a line, but the price of a service or product is lower, or to a place where there is no line, but the price is more expensive. The client knows that in one place he can get a service (for example, get a haircut) for 10 coins, but without a queue, and in another for 5 coins, but after standing in a queue or in a third, the price will be 3 coins at all, but with a crush. Where will go the client will depend on how and how much the client values \u200b\u200bhis free time.

They may argue that this can only be so if all clients have the same income, then it will really be a matter of free time. It is true, the main reason, other things being equal, determining the client's behavior will be his income. Therefore, for example, a director of a corporation or an expensive lawyer will not stand in line at a cheap hairdresser, but will overpay a triple price even for the same quality haircut. However, this requires serious social stratification with all the accompanying disadvantages, for example, crime. For example, in the mature USSR, the incomes of all were relatively equal - the official decile coefficient (excluding subsidies) did not exceed 4.4, and when recalculated taking into account subsidies to the poor, it was 2.2. Now it's 15. By the way, the decile coefficient under Stalin was about 6 and there were significantly fewer queues, if, of course, we do not take the war years.

The queues in the USSR were generated by equalizing principles, i.e. concern for low-paying citizens and a much smaller number of shops and outlets... The second aspect “for some reason” is not paid attention at all. Only physical redundancy of goods and places of their distribution can objectively contribute to the prevalence of the first type of queues. But this is not our Russian case. The USSR is not a rich West, which is located in a much more optimal climate, plus it plunders the whole world, as a result of which it has many hands free from production and can afford such waste. Obviously, it has nothing to do with optimal economic management.

Look, now trade in Russia by objective Russian standards is so hypertrophied that it absorbs most of the profits of real production, undoubtedly increasing the further degradation of the manufacturing sector. The only way out here is to return to the situation with queues, but at the same time transfer two-thirds of the people currently employed in trade, mediation and finance to the real sector of the economy. When the production is working and optimized, then the queues will begin to disappear, as it was, for example, after the War and at the end of Industrialization. Is the queue evil? Yes, of course, evil. But, alas, in this case the alternative is even worse.

Many patriotic citizens even claim that any government that does not fight excess trade will not be a government of national salvation. That is, the queue, within reasonable limits, is not an overwhelming factor, but a factor stimulating production.

From the above, it follows an obvious conclusion that, in general, queues increase the welfare of society, because they provide a more efficient load of resources than compensate for the loss of time caused by standing in queues. Of course, if the situation is not brought to the point of absurdity, as it was purposefully done during the destruction of the USSR. But then the massive queues arose for a completely different reason - as a result of economic sabotage, “cashed” rubles from the manufacturing sector poured into trade, because of which the money supply increased sharply, but prices remained the same, so the people with “hot” money swept everything away.
It is strange to blame the Soviet System for this - it was already practically paralyzed by a series of blows.

Marketers say queuing is a waste of precious time. According to them, a limited resource - and this is the “deficit” - should be given not to those who previously joined the queue, but to those “who work harder” (this is how cleverly the word is manipulated for those who have more money - these concepts are far from identical) and needs more support. Well, of course, who else should the ideologists of the "free market" support, not the poor?

In the USSR, the idea was diametrically opposite - the system was tuned not only to optimize the workload of labor and distribution resources, but also, above all, to ensure equal availability of basic goods, with little dependence on personal income. For the “market”, the task is simply not posed in this way, the main thing for them is to ensure the decisive advantage of individuals with money over everyone else. And at what price it will cost the whole society, how much it correlates with human concepts of morality and justice - they care least of all.

In order to illustrate the essence of the Soviet Union's approach and the usefulness of a certain number of queues for the whole society under socialism, I will give an example of an economic experiment, which is cited in his classic work by P. Heine. For the convenience of presentation, I do not present his economic calculations.

So, in experiments to optimize ticket prices in a 700-seat cinema at a student college, revenues cover the costs at a ticket price of $ 3.15. At a price of $ 2.50, a queue appears and the hall, of course, is 100% full. This is exactly the situation that existed in the USSR, when the prices of many products and tickets to cultural institutions (theaters, cinemas, museums ...) were subsidized.

However, everything changes if the goal is to get as much net profit as possible from the screening of the film, so what will be the price? Answer: $ 5. If the price is set to $ 5, 500 tickets will be sold. The total revenue will be $ 2,500 and net proceeds - $ 300. The best ... can not get it. "
Please note the key point: with a maximum revenue of 200 (almost a third!), Cinema seats are empty. These are people who will be cut off from culture in order to maximize profits, but more on that later. But the most important thing in terms of efficiency is quite different: the market model is fundamentally incapable of ensuring optimal resource allocation. From 1/10 to 1/3 of the resource simply disappears.

Another very important point - in the experiment under consideration, the cinema maximized its profit by significantly limiting access to the resource due to the high price. Yes, he won, but this means that in the entire social organism, where resources are not taken from anywhere, someone else has significantly lost.

The bottom line is that in any large system There are several levels of optimization, and “market people”, keeping silent about the rest, artificially isolate only one level - optimization at the enterprise level, which dominates the market economy, usually to the detriment of higher level optimization. At the same time, local systems are in conflict with each other, spending enormous resources on taking a piece from someone else, as shown in the above experiment, and not agreeing on the level of the whole society.

It was on this that the USSR "went", this explains its high efficiency - it was built as a single integral system, where optimization was at the highest possible level. Moreover, the sacrifice of profits at the local level was deliberate, because there was a greater gain from optimizing the allocation of resources at the level of the whole society.

In the USSR, the ticket distribution model (and trade is just distribution and nothing else) would be solved as follows. The price of some tickets will be slightly lower than demand and will ensure that tickets are available to everyone. Then the overwhelming majority will rush to the queue for cheap tickets. The rest of the tickets will be made more expensive, but they will be on sale freely. Finally, the third part of the tickets will be expensive, but always available and will be sold expensive until the last minute, and then the price may decrease. We will have a typical socialist trade model. In this case, the second part will symbolize the Soviet co-trade, and the third part - the market. Those who do not want to stand behind cheap tickets will go and buy them a little more expensive. If we make the cooperative system more convenient, retail outlets are closer, best watch work, etc., then a significant part of the goods will go through the cooperative trade system. Such a system was extremely developed in the USSR during Stalin's time and was introduced at his insistence. Not surprisingly, there were not many queues. By the way, the idea of \u200b\u200bcooperative trade in state level and with the support of the state belongs not to Stalin, but to Lenin. Stalin simply implemented it very successfully, despite the fierce resistance of the "revolutionary Leninists".

The costs of pacifying society in the event of ideological incidents which would many times exceed the losses incurred by the state selling tickets at their cost. The current history of Russia has proven this perfectly.

And who loses as a result of incorrect optimization? The whole society is losing, and very large at that. The inevitable social stratification and isolation of a considerable number of people from the benefits that are fundamentally inaccessible to them will have to pay with strong social tension, which results in an epidemic of suicide, drug addiction, an epidemic of unmotivated cruelty and the reluctance of the population to give birth to children.

The cinema here is just an example, by the way, quite good. The fact is that the choice in this case was made by students, not the most affluent part of the population - if a ticket costs 3 dollars, then a student can have something to eat for 2 dollars and watch a movie, then for 5 he will have a choice - go to the cinema or have dinner ... In general, 200 out of 700 people cannot have dinner and have fun under the market system. And such a fairly significant layer of those who, in principle, will not have access to social benefits above the minimum in a market economy will always be. Naturally, the ratio will vary from 30% in the US to 90% in Paraguay, but again, it will always be. Do you think this is normal and natural? Well, then you will get wild street gangs, a lot of suicides, unthinkable for a "damned scoop", a sadistic boss, a close relative who became a drug addict and other delights of the "free market".

Liberals point out that students and teachers paid with money, while in the USSR people "paid" with their time, which was all the more wasted. Yes, time is money when it comes to production. But the vast majority of the population queues outside of working hours.

Another thing is that if people live correctly and with public morals and health everything is in order, then queues generally worsen the situation in society, since in general a person will have less time for family, taking care of their health, for example, sports, and so on. ... The person in line is under unnecessary stress.

Just remember that in a “market economy,” a person spends even more time chasing money, and it’s better not to mention the stress experienced in this case - stress in a moderate queue will seem like child's play. You just need to be clearly aware of what society pays if it chooses a social model - with what is it "linked", what is its reverse side, payment for advantages?

What happens if you raise the price, but don't add the amount of money, as the liberals suggest? By itself, a rise in price means that with the same salary, consumption of the product will decrease, since a person will be able to buy less of this product. But with a stable money supply, prices for other goods should fall. If new money is not printed, then, given the equality of consumption and production, an increase in price will immediately cause a decrease in consumption, that is, there will be at least a small overproduction, as happened in the case of the cinema. In other words, the efficiency of the economy will decrease, since some of the resources in the form of other overproduced goods will then be thrown into a landfill or service facilities will not be used.

But what about the liberals' argument that the surplus profit earned from the sale of milk at an increased price will be used to expand its production? Not everything is so simple - the profit received from the sale of milk can be used to expand production, if there is a guarantee that this will lead to a further increase in profits. Why should they be? If the price of milk does not rise, then no one will invest in additional production. You can certainly invest, but this profit was very small. In reality, this money cannot significantly increase milk production, since it was too small compared to the losses from overproduction. And to really increase milk production required huge investments at the state level. This has been shown by the experience of present-day Russia and all former socialist countries, where meat and milk production began to be much less.

By the way, the main increase in labor productivity in the USSR was associated not with the investments of the commodity producer, but with the state investments in science and technology.

Queues of the first type in the USSR were economically profitable because they allowed saving resources in the face of uncertainty about future demand. By the way, they are also beneficial in the West.

We have an excellent historical and economic experiment to test the null hypothesis with a huge statistical data set. In place of the former socialist countries, more than 24 states arose, which ALL eliminated socialism and Soviet queues. They acted in a variety of ways. Some, like Poland, used shock therapy, others, like the Czech Republic and Ukraine, acted very gradually. Therefore, there is no reason to say that these are the mistakes of managers, “distortions of the correct idea of \u200b\u200bthe market”, etc.

An analysis of the state of affairs in all (!) Post-socialist countries showed that when the queues were eliminated, less meat and milk were produced. Everywhere. Awesome, right? For that fought for it and ran. This is about the efficiency of the economic system.

Wait, the original hypothesis of market economists was that after the elimination of queues, production and consumption of meat should have increased? It turns out that this is not at all the case. It would seem that one could conclude that the queue stimulated production.

But in fact, everything is noticeably more complicated - it was not the queue that stimulated, it would be ideal if it did not exist at all. It was stimulated by the Soviet Economy, with a slight imbalance of which there were queues. This is the price to pay for its positive features. Under socialism there are crises, whatever the Marxists claim, and the indicator of socialist crises is a queue. With a slight skew, this is a queue of the first type, in case of serious crises, queues of the second type appear - this is the weak side of the Soviet System, although production is not disrupted if it is not artificially disrupted. This is the strength of the planned Soviet System.

In the same way, social tension, crime, moral decay, mass ruin with a corresponding wave of social collisions are the payment for the pleasure of having a "free" market.

I can be accused of idealizing the queue. This is not true. I experienced all the delights of standing in lines the hard way. Have you ever stood in line during Soviet times and asked me more than once? Yes, I personally stood there many times - I had to transport sausage and other products from Moscow to Ivanovo. The impressions are unforgettable, but not at all terrible, as they now want to imagine. The queue is a whole layer of culture.

But why it was impossible to organize a Swedish system with numbers - it was elementary to do it, I did not understand. At one time it seemed strange to me why it was so difficult to come up with a system of paper numbers. Although, if by and large, why is this system with numbers and digital displays fundamentally better than the Soviet one? Somewhat more expensive, that's all. And its "advantages" are visible only with small queues. If there are a lot of people, where will they sit and walk? - there will still be a crowd. In the Soviet line, it was also not necessary to stand, buried in the back of the front man. If there were benches, then you could sit. You could take the line and go for a walk.

All this most likely could have been organized in the USSR, but the hands did not reach. The culture of queuing had to be developed. Trading on orders could be of great help in this and it developed vigorously. The packaging industry was also developing ... But then there was an urgent need for the ruling elite not to solve problems, but to make money on the "drain" of their own country.

Now to the question that the necessary products in the USSR were supposedly impossible to "get". This is an absolute lie - there was an alternative: the meat was in the store for 2 rubles, in the coptorg for 3.5 rubles, and in the market, for example, in Ivanovo, 4 rubles. There were shops to order. There you could buy to order, but paying 30% on top. Shop without queues - no problem! Finally, meat, like milk, could be eaten out of line in any Soviet canteen. Although it was more expensive there than in the store - from 25 to 50%. For children, special funds were allocated to schools for meat and milk, and they received quite a large amount of it. For infants, milk was distributed through dairy kitchens. Milk and meat have always been allocated to nursing mothers ... Naturally, there was always an opportunity to buy it in a co-shop or on the market. I emphasize: always.

So the “hungry children without food” argument is just a dirty lie. 100%. It looks especially disgusting against the background of the fact that in the current "Russia", according to the official data of the Ministry of Defense, every third of the conscripts (yesterday's schoolchildren) "suffers from a serious lack of weight", that is, to put it simply, dystrophic. I affirm as a doctor who worked in the USSR - there were no dystrophics there. Generally.

It may seem that the author considers the Soviet system of distribution to be ideal. No, it is not. I consider Soviet economic system much more efficient and fair than all others, including western model... It’s just that we must take the best from the Soviet system, take into account its shortcomings and mistakes and move forward. It is possible that the distribution system may function differently in the future. If New Russia manages to break through into a new post-industrial era, then large megalopolises, apparently, will be disbanded and resettled, and a significant part of the primary production will be produced locally and there will be no great need for our usual distribution method. Moreover, no one will inflame consumer desires with advertising and the like effect on the brain.

The planned economy also destroys the queue and is often more efficient than the market economy. Under Soviet rule, the queue was an operational regulatory mechanism. The market economy has an advantage in the speed of response, but it is incomparably more expensive than the planned one.

There were many options for neutralizing the negative impact of queues, but the worst way was deliberately chosen - this is the transition to a much less economically efficient and immoral capitalist market, which was implemented in today's Russia and the former socialist countries.

S. Mironin

REFERENCES

1. (see the first option) http://vif2ne.ru/nvz/forum/0/co/217465.htm
2. Heine P. Economic way of thinking. www.libertarium.ru/libertarium/lib_thinking
3.http: //adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978STIN...8016549A
4.http: //www.contr-tv.ru/common/1872/
5.http: //www.contr-tv.ru/common/2337/
6. McConnell K.P. and Brue S.L. 2007. Economics. M. Infra-M.
7.http: //www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle_base.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/integratedsystemstalin.html
8. Glazyev S.Yu., Kara-Murza S.G. and Batchikov S.A. 2003. White Paper. Economic reforms in Russia 1991-2001 M. Algorithm. S. 62-63.
9. Mironin S. 2005. The naked market king. Internet site versus TV screen. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1461/
10. Glazyev S.Yu. et al., 2003.S. 62-63.
11. Mironin S. 2005.http: //www.contr-tv.ru/common/1461/

There are very few studies on the problem of queues in the world, but in Russia there are practically none. Yes, actually, why are they needed? The solution seems obvious: "There is a queue, open another cashier, put the cashier there." However, the situation is changing, the margin of retailers is no longer the same, customers are dear to them, but the staff is even more expensive, because each employee needs to be paid a salary.

Oddly enough, the first to talk about the need for automated solutions to combat queues in Russia was a small and medium business , but not at all large networkscaring for high technology in the trading floor.

Exactly small companies contacted us with a question whether we can create a technology to control the formation of queues in retail outlets. So it happened that we investigated the problem of the appearance and movement of queues, and at the same time revealed and confirmed many very interesting facts.

Fact 1. Customers are predisposed to create a queue

When one of the largest international H&M chains entered the Russian market, its top management was proud of the queues. When talking about H&M, the network showed pictures of huge queues in Japan. It would seem that such negative information could scare away buyers. However, no.

Each of us loves to buy the same as the others. If there are people somewhere, then we will like it there too. This is psychology. Who wants to go to an empty store or a deserted cafe?

And looking around the trading floor with purchases in hand with a cursory glance, we often unconsciously get up exactly at the cash register where there are already people, and we simply do not notice an empty one.

Fact 2. Choosing a checkout intuitively, the buyer is almost always wrong

Most people are right-handed, and this leaves an imprint on their thinking. American researchers have shown that the right-hander intuitively prefers to stand on the right and walk to the right. I am not a brain researcher, but our observation of trading halls stores fully confirmed this feature of people's behavior.

The left checkout is often empty, and the queue is always longer at the right one. A single queue to all cash desks at once - good way solutions to this problem.

In addition, when choosing a checkout, the buyer almost always chooses the one that moves slowly but smoothly, and not the one that moves faster, but in jerks. Which is quite understandable, because the buyer does not have time to watch the cash registers.

By the way, a smaller quantity of goods in the baskets in front is also not a panacea, the process of movement of people slows down interaction with the cashier and payment more than scanning the goods. The machines for accepting money, which are practiced in Russia "Auchan" and "Perekrestok", are a good way to increase the throughput of cash registers.

Fact 3. The behavior of buyers in the queue is similar to the maneuvers of motorists on the road: "checkers" and "roadsiders" create congestion

It's not a secret for anyone that motorists themselves are partly to blame for traffic jams: "roadsiders" build in forward, slowing down the movement from behind, as well as those who decided to change lane, deciding that the other is going faster.

The flow rate is reduced during maneuvers. The same happens in the queue: those who stood at the cashier for a long time and decided to run across, as a result, detain themselves and those around them. Those who took the line and then came up with a full trolley are not worth talking about.

Fact 4. The buyer experiences negative emotions after an average of 6 minutes 30 seconds in the queue

In his decisions, the buyer is inconsistent: he loves places where there are many people, but does not want to stand for a long time. His loyalty to the store begins to drop sharply at about the seventh minute of standing in line.

After about 6 minutes and 30 seconds, the customer is struck by the following thought: "Next time I'll think about whether to go here or not." This was shown by our simple survey. The critical threshold, after which some of the customers leave the store, comes in the tenth minute of waiting.

However, the waiting time is different for different stores. With a cart in a hypermarket, people are ready to wait longer, in non-food retail - less. It's clear that a pair of T-shirts or sneakers are easier to put in place and go somewhere else. And the mood of the buyer largely depends on the assortment of the store, it is not a shame to stand behind an exclusive.

At the same time, store management, as a rule, notices the problem of queues in the store no earlier than a year and a half after the opening of the outlet. The presence of a large number of customers is initially perceived as a plus, and they begin to think about solutions to increase the checkout traffic much later.

Fact 5. Retailers prefer the queue to entertain rather than eliminate

In fairness, it must be said that there are fewer queues in saturated markets. At the same time, many large Western chains took care of this problem much earlier than Russian ones (they introduced, in particular, a single queue and automatic payment machines).

Nevertheless, now one of the most common ways to deal with the negative consequences of queues in Europe and America is to entertain the buyer:

• First, the mirrors at the checkout (the buyer is busy looking at himself and not getting too angry),
• Secondly, a TV with music channels or news.

Fact 6. Store employees are not interested in solving the queue problem

Often, the scale of the queuing problem at the point of sale may not be clear to the business owner. It often happens that the store management sees its main task in cost optimization and is unlikely to waste time counting the number of people in the queue and the number of customers who have left. After all, the results of such a study will lead to the store manager having to explain to the owner the need to hire additional staff, which does not fit in with the optimization course.

In practice, this usually leads to the fact that the business owner does not know about the problem until some time after it has appeared, being in the store during rush hour.

Fact 7. In Russia, the service is better, but people are also more patient

Residents of Russia are very patient, and they seem to be used to queues here. But this only applies to the older generation. The overwhelming majority of people in Russia, especially the younger generation, categorically dislikes and does not accept queues.

Oddly enough, it is in Russia that retail offers customers a better service than in Europe. Most of the shops are open late, some are generally round the clock, they have no days off, as well as lunch breaks. A European is no stranger to the fact that after being late at work, he will not get to the supermarket in the evening, and on Sunday everything will be closed.

And life in most European capitals is more measured than in Moscow. They do not want to wait with us and cannot, therefore, metropolitan market we see a free niche that will allow us to realize and bring to the market automated solutionsallowing you to control the number of queues at the cashier and, if necessary, call additional personnel.

Fact 8. Small and medium-sized businesses will outpace large chains in the fight against queues

As a rule, any technologies in Russia are first introduced by large retailers, be it self-checkouts, security systems or staff motivation. However, as we can see, in this case, it is the medium-sized business that is most interested in the development of automated technologies that allow tracking queues at the checkout. At his request, we have developed a queue detector that allows you to count customers in the queue and signals that it is time to open another checkout.

The demand for such technologies has arisen from small chain stores "near home" and off-chain retail outlets. And there is an explanation for this: small stores are not always able to withstand price competition with chains. At the same time, expensive video analytics systems existing on the market are not available to them. And here is the customer loyalty gained through good service and quicker shopping is their real competitive advantage.

This seems counterintuitive, but it actually reduces the waiting time.

Researchers have found that it takes a certain amount of time to serve each customer: on average, 41 seconds to say hello, pay, say goodbye and pick up purchases, and three seconds to break through each product. Therefore, it turns out that the queue of several people with fewer goods will actually move more slowly.

Let's count. It will take about six minutes to break through 100 products of one customer. If you queue up with four people, each with 20 items, it will take almost seven minutes to service.

If you add up this time, a lot comes up in a year. Richard Larson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimated that all Americans spend 37 billion hours a year in queues.

Turn left

Most people are right-handed and usually turn right, so there may be less queues on the left.

Pay attention to the cashier

If you notice that the cashier is especially talkative, talking to customers or commenting on products, avoid this line.

Study other buyers

It is not only the number of people in front of you that matters, but also their age and purchases.

For example, serving the elderly takes longer. They don't always know how to handle a credit card and generally slow down the queue.

Also pay attention to the number of different items in the shopping carts of the people ahead. Punching six identical goods is faster than six completely different ones.

Choose a queue that leads to multiple cashiers

Such lines are usually found at airports and banks, but also in supermarkets. They move the fastest because the person at the front of the line approaches the first employee to free.

In addition, standing in such a queue, we feel a sense of relief, because we no longer need to choose which cashier to approach and doubt our decision.

Avoid lines with barriers

If the cashier cannot see the entire queue, for example, a wall or shelf obstructs the view, customers will have to wait longer Masha Shunko, Julie Niederhoff, Yaroslav Rosokha Humans Are Not Machines: The Behavioral Impact of Queueing Design on Service Time..

Speed \u200b\u200bup service

• Place goods with a barcode at the cashier.
• When shopping for clothes, immediately remove the hangers and take out the labels so that the cashier can scan them faster.

Remember that waiting is only in your head

To some extent, expectation is just a psychological state. Most people tend to exaggerate their waiting time by 36%.

In addition, shoppers pay more attention to the length of the queue rather than how fast it moves. When choosing between a slow-moving short queue and a fast-moving long queue, we tend to prefer the first one, even if the waiting times in both queues are the same.

Also, remember that waiting is faster if you're distracted by something like talking to other customers or reading.

Privacy agreement

and processing of personal data

1. General Provisions

1.1. This agreement on confidentiality and processing of personal data (hereinafter referred to as the Agreement) is freely accepted and of its own free will, applies to all information that LLC "Inseils Rus" and / or its affiliates, including all persons belonging to the same group with LLC "Insails Rus" (including LLC "EKAM service") may receive information about the User during the use of any of the sites, services, services, computer programs, products or services of LLC "Insails Rus" (hereinafter referred to as the Services) and in the course of execution of any agreements and contracts with the User by Insales Rus LLC. The User's consent to the Agreement, expressed by him in the framework of relations with one of the listed persons, applies to all other listed persons.

1.2 Use of the Services means the User agrees with this Agreement and the conditions specified therein; in case of disagreement with these conditions, the User must refrain from using the Services.

"Insails" - Society with limited liability "Inseils Rus", PSRN 1117746506514, INN 7714843760, checkpoint 771401001, registered at the address: 125319, Moscow, Akademika Ilyushin st., 4, building 1, office 11 (hereinafter - "Insales"), on the one hand and

"User" -

or individualwho has legal capacity and is recognized as a participant in civil legal relations in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation;

or entityregistered in accordance with the legislation of the state of which such person is a resident;

or an individual entrepreneur registered in accordance with the legislation of the state of which such a person is a resident;

which has accepted the terms of this Agreement.

1.4 For the purposes of this Agreement, the Parties have determined that confidential information is information of any nature (production, technical, economic, organizational and others), including information about the results of intellectual activity, as well as information about how to implement professional activity (including, but not limited to: information about products, works and services; information about technologies and research works; information about technical systems and hardware, including software items; business forecasts and information about prospective purchases; requirements and specifications of specific partners and potential partners; information related to intellectual property, as well as plans and technologies related to all of the above) communicated by one party to the other in writing and / or electronic form, explicitly designated by the Party as its confidential information.

1.5. The purpose of this Agreement is to protect confidential information that the Parties will exchange during negotiations, concluding contracts and fulfilling obligations, as well as any other interaction (including, but not limited to, consulting, requesting and providing information, and performing other orders).

2. Obligations of the Parties

2.1. The parties agree to keep confidential all confidential informationreceived by one Party from the other Party during the interaction of the Parties, not to disclose, disclose, make public or otherwise provide such information to any third party without the prior written permission of the other Party, except as specified in the current legislation, when the provision of such information information is the responsibility of the Parties.

2.2. Each of the Parties will take all necessary measures to protect confidential information, at least using the same measures that the Party applies to protect its own confidential information. Access to confidential information is provided only to those employees of each of the Parties who reasonably need it to perform their official duties for the implementation of this Agreement.

2.3. The obligation to keep confidential information in secret is valid within the term of this Agreement, the license agreement for computer programs dated 01.12.2016, the agreement of accession to the license agreement for computer programs, agency and other agreements and for five years after termination their actions, unless the Parties separately agree otherwise.

(a) if the information provided has become publicly available without violating the obligations of one of the Parties;

(b) if the information provided has become known to the Party as a result of its own research, systematic observations or other activities carried out without the use of confidential information received from the other Party;

(c) if the information provided has been lawfully obtained from a third party without an obligation to keep it secret until it is provided by one of the Parties;

(d) if information is provided by written request organ state power, other state body, or local self-government body in order to perform their functions and its disclosure to these bodies is mandatory for the Party. In this case, the Party must immediately notify the other Party about the received request;

(e) if the information is provided to a third party with the consent of the Party, the information about which is transferred.

2.5. Insales does not verify the accuracy of the information provided by the User and does not have the ability to assess his legal capacity.

2.6 The information that the User provides to Inseils when registering for the Services is not personal data as defined in Federal law RF No. 152-FZ dated July 27, 2006. "About personal data".

2.7 Insales has the right to amend this Agreement. When changes are made in the current edition, the date of the last update is indicated. The new version of the Agreement comes into force from the moment it is posted, unless otherwise provided by the new version of the Agreement.

2.8. By accepting this Agreement, the User understands and agrees that Inseils can send the User personalized messages and information (including but not limited to) to improve the quality of the Services, to develop new products, to create and send to the User personal offers, to inform the User about changes in Tariff plans and updates, to send the User marketing materials on the subject of the Services, to protect the Services and Users and for other purposes.

The user has the right to refuse to receive the above information by notifying it in writing to the email address of Inseils -.

2.9. By accepting this Agreement, the User understands and agrees that the Insails Services may use cookies, counters, other technologies to ensure the performance of the Services as a whole or their individual functions in particular, and the User has no claims against Inseils in this regard.

2.10. The user is aware that the equipment and softwareused by him to visit sites on the Internet may have the function of prohibiting operations with cookies (for any sites or for certain sites), as well as deleting previously received cookies.

Insails has the right to establish that the provision of a certain Service is possible only if the acceptance and receipt of cookies is permitted by the User.

2.11. The user is solely responsible for the security of the means chosen by him to access the account, and also independently ensures their confidentiality. The User is solely responsible for all actions (as well as their consequences) within or using the Services under the User's account, including cases of voluntary transfer of data by the User to access the User's account to third parties on any terms (including under contracts or agreements) ... At the same time, all actions within or using the Services under the User's account are considered to have been performed by the User himself, except for cases when the User has notified Inseils about unauthorized access to the Services using the User's account and / or about any violation (suspicions of violation) of the confidentiality of his account access means.

2.12 The User is obliged to immediately notify Insails about any case of unauthorized (not authorized by the User) access to the Services using the User's account and / or about any violation (suspicion of violation) of the confidentiality of his account access means. For security reasons, the User is obliged to independently carry out a safe shutdown under his account at the end of each session of work with the Services. Insales is not responsible for possible loss or damage to data, as well as other consequences of any nature that may occur due to violation by the User of the provisions of this part of the Agreement.

3.Responsibility of the Parties

3.1. A Party that has violated the obligations stipulated by the Agreement regarding the protection of confidential information transferred under the Agreement is obliged to compensate, at the request of the affected Party, for real damage caused by such a violation of the terms of the Agreement in accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation.

3.2 Compensation for damage does not terminate the obligations of the offending Party to properly fulfill its obligations under the Agreement.

4.Other provisions

4.1. All notices, inquiries, requests and other correspondence under this Agreement, including those that include confidential information, must be made in writing and delivered in person or through a courier, or sent by e-mail addresses specified in the license agreement for computer programs dated 01.12.2016, the agreement of accession to the license agreement for computer programs and in this Agreement or other addresses that may be further indicated by the Party in writing.

4.2. If one or more provisions (conditions) of this Agreement are or become invalid, then this cannot serve as a reason for the termination of other provisions (conditions).

4.3. The law of the Russian Federation shall apply to this Agreement and the relationship between the User and Insales arising in connection with the application of the Agreement.

4.3. All suggestions or questions regarding this Agreement, the User has the right to send to the Inseils User Support Service or to the postal address: 107078, Moscow, st. Novoryazanskaya, 18, p. 11-12 Business Center "Stendhal" LLC "Inseils Rus".

Date of publication: 01.12.2016

Full name in Russian:

Limited Liability Company "Insales Rus"

Abbreviated name in Russian:

LLC "Insails Rus"

Name in English:

InSales Rus Limited Liability Company (InSales Rus LLC)

Legal address:

125319, Moscow, st. Academician Ilyushin, 4, building 1, office 11

Mailing address:

107078, Moscow, st. Novoryazanskaya, 18, p. 11-12, BC "Stendhal"

INN: 7714843760 Checkpoint: 771401001

Bank details: