Word of Honor

The U.S. may have pioneered the self-service supermarket, but the Swiss are leading the way toward putting it on the honor system. Last week the big Migros Federation (1965 gross: $450 million) announced that after a successful six-month trial in a suburban Zurich store, it was extending an honor-system checkout to other stores.

Under the honor system, shoppers select their groceries, tot up their tab on an adding machine, then pay a cashier. The sum is never questioned. "From time to time," says Migros Sales Chief Rolf Frieden, "we have customers who come back saying they underpaid us, but it happens just as often the other way. We always make up the difference, no questions asked." At the test store, sales went up, overhead went down, and pilferage amounted to only 0.3% of sales, just about what it had been before.

Would the honor system work in the supermarkets of other nations? Perhaps. But some marketmen are dubious. Says French Supermarketeer Francois Mathey: "If we tried that in France, they would steal us blind. It's not so much that the French are less honest than the Swiss, but the mentality is so different."

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