Stakeholders in the Real World: Why Morrisons Rethought Self-Checkouts
For many Business students, stakeholders are introduced as a list.
Customers. Employees. Shareholders. Suppliers. Government. Local communities.
But stakeholder influence becomes much more interesting when different groups want different things from the same business decision.
A trip to the supermarket provides a surprisingly good example.
Over recent years, self-service checkouts have become increasingly common across UK supermarkets. For retailers, the attraction is fairly obvious. Technology can allow more customers to pay without requiring a separate employee to operate every checkout.
For some customers, self-service is also convenient. Scan the shopping, pay and leave.
But not everybody sees it that way. And Morrisons discovered that ignoring those differences can create a genuine business problem.
When customers pushed back
Morrisons chief executive Rami Baitiéh has described visiting one of the company's stores after joining the business and finding customers signing a petition.
Their complaint?
They did not want staffed checkouts removed and replaced by self-service machines. According to Baitiéh, hundreds of customers had signed the letter. When he asked why the business had been increasing self-checkouts, the explanation was straightforward:
productivity. AlixPartners
That makes sense from one perspective.
If technology enables the business to process transactions using fewer employee hours, operating costs could potentially fall. Higher productivity could help Morrisons remain price competitive in an extremely competitive supermarket industry.
But the customers were looking at the decision from a completely different perspective.
They were interested in the shopping experience. Suddenly, a decision that might appear sensible on a spreadsheet was creating stakeholder conflict.
Not every customer wants the same thing
There is an important complication. Customers themselves are not one identical group. Baitiéh compared the Morrisons store where customers were protesting with a Marks & Spencer store near a university. He said around 70% of customers at the Morrisons store were older or “empty nesters”, whereas the M&S location had a much younger student customer base. AlixPartners
That matters.
Some shoppers may prefer self-checkouts because they are quick and involve little interaction. Others may actively prefer speaking to an employee.
BBC News found exactly this difference when investigating attitudes towards self-service tills. Some shoppers valued the speed and independence of self-checkout, while others preferred staffed checkouts because they were easier to use or provided valuable human interaction. BBC Mirror
So even within one stakeholder group — customers — objectives and preferences can conflict. That is an important lesson for Business students. Saying that “customers want good customer service” is rarely enough. Different customers may define good customer service very differently.
The power of the customer
Customers do not own Morrisons. They cannot normally vote at shareholder meetings or directly instruct its managers. So why should their opinion matter? Because customers possess another important form of stakeholder power. They can spend their money somewhere else.
The UK grocery market gives consumers considerable choice. If a customer becomes dissatisfied with Morrisons, competitors including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Lidl are all competing for that spending.
Baitiéh's argument is therefore particularly interesting. Reducing staffed checkouts might lower costs and increase productivity, but if the change damages the customer experience badly enough to reduce sales, the apparent saving may prove to be a false economy. He summarised the issue by arguing that Morrisons could not simply reduce costs while losing customers at the same time. AlixPartners
This is stakeholder influence in practice. Customers did not simply express an opinion.
Their reaction contributed to management reconsidering an operational decision.
Morrisons changes direction
By August 2024, Morrisons had publicly acknowledged that its use of self-checkouts had gone too far in some locations. The company began reviewing the balance between self-service machines and staffed checkouts, with some stores set to have self-checkouts removed. BBC Mirror
The approach was not to abandon technology altogether. Instead, Morrisons began recognising that the appropriate checkout mix could depend upon the particular customers using each store.
In one example reported by Retail Gazette, Morrisons removed some self-service checkouts at its Brough supermarket and added four staffed tills. The company reported positive reactions from both customers and employees. Retail Gazette
This is an important distinction. The business did not conclude that: self-checkouts = bad.
Instead, management had to consider whether the technology was appropriate for the needs of different stores and different stakeholder groups.
But what about the shareholders?
Customers are not the only stakeholders. Shareholders and owners are likely to be interested in the financial performance of the business. Staffed checkouts require employees. Employees create costs. Technology may therefore offer opportunities to improve productivity and control labour costs.
Removing self-service checkouts could consequently create another conflict. A decision that improves customer satisfaction could potentially increase operating costs. Management therefore has to balance: customer experience against productivity and cost control.
Baitiéh explicitly describes technological decisions in terms of their effect on customers, colleagues and shareholders. He argues that technological improvement is important, but should not come at the expense of other stakeholders. AlixPartners
That is much closer to the reality of stakeholder management than simply memorising a stakeholder list.
Employees matter too
Employees are another stakeholder affected by the decision. More staffed tills could mean greater demand for employees at checkouts. For some workers this may provide more hours or job opportunities. However, technology does not necessarily simply “replace workers”.
Self-service areas themselves need monitoring, customers require assistance, machines malfunction and employees may be redeployed to different activities around the store. The issue therefore becomes one of how technology changes the role and productivity of labour, rather than simply whether machines or people are better.
Morrisons faces the challenge of using technology to improve efficiency while maintaining the service its customers expect.
Stakeholder conflict is rarely simple
The Morrisons example shows why stakeholder questions are often much more complicated than they first appear.
Consider the possible objectives:
Customers may want short queues, choice and good service.
Employees may value secure employment, reasonable workloads and positive interaction with customers.
Shareholders are likely to want the business to control costs and improve financial performance.
Managers need to improve productivity while remaining competitive and protecting the customer experience.
None of those objectives is unreasonable.
The difficulty is that achieving one may make another harder to achieve. A supermarket could employ large numbers of checkout staff and provide highly personal service — but this increases costs. It could automate almost everything — but risk frustrating some customers.
The real management question therefore becomes: Which stakeholders should Morrisons prioritise, and how far? There is no automatic answer. And that is exactly why stakeholder management matters.
Applying the Business
The Morrisons case demonstrates something important about stakeholder influence. A stakeholder does not necessarily need formal ownership of a business to influence its decisions.
Customers influenced Morrisons because their satisfaction ultimately affects sales, loyalty and long-term business performance. It also demonstrates that stakeholder groups should not always be treated as though everybody within them wants the same thing. A university student buying a sandwich may value a rapid self-checkout. An older customer completing a weekly shop may strongly prefer a staffed till.
Effective stakeholder management therefore requires businesses to understand who their stakeholders are, what they want, how much power they possess and how their objectives may conflict.
And sometimes, something as ordinary as choosing which checkout to use reveals all four.
Suggested Questions
GCSE Business
Identify two stakeholder groups affected by Morrisons' decision about self-service checkouts.
Explain one way in which customers were able to influence Morrisons' decisions.
Explain why the objectives of customers and shareholders could conflict when Morrisons decides how many staffed checkouts to provide.
A Level Business
Analyse how the power of customers could influence operational decisions at Morrisons.
Analyse one possible conflict between the objectives of Morrisons' customers and shareholders when deciding whether to increase the use of self-service technology.
Evaluate whether Morrisons should prioritise customer satisfaction over improvements in productivity when deciding the balance between staffed and self-service checkouts.
The final question is the interesting one.
A strong answer should avoid assuming that either self-service or staffed checkouts are automatically superior. The decision is likely to depend upon factors including the customer profile of an individual store, labour costs, queue times, competitors and the effect of the decision on sales.
Sources
The strongest primary source is the 2026 interview with Morrisons CEO Rami Baitiéh, in which he discusses the customer petition, different customer demographics and the need to consider technology from a stakeholder perspective. AlixPartners
BBC News provides useful independent reporting on Morrisons' decision to reconsider self-checkout numbers and the contrasting views of different customers. BBC Mirror
Retail Gazette provides the specific example of changes at Morrisons' Brough store.
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