[km3k]

I'd argue they are smart. I shop a lot at Wal-mart, but rarely step in the store. I shop online, do their free grocery pickup and their in-store (non-grocery) pickup. The last one is technically walking into the store, but the non-grocery pickup is just inside the front door, so I'm not really going to the main part of the store. Plus, the times I do go into the store, they have a really nice automated checkout with a lot of stations. In my experience, Wal-mart automated checkouts are the smoothest and least likely to be broken compared to other stores I've used automated checkout at. Wal-mart does a great job getting my business without requiring me to actually interact with their employees and other customers or wait significant amounts of time for anything.