Albertsons was once one of the largest grocery chains in the United States with over 1,100 grocery stores, but in the early 2000s the company began to feel the competitive pinch from companies like Wal-Mart and Costco. In January 2006, the company announced that it would be sold to SuperValu, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis. Prior to the sale, Albertsons had attempted to lower prices to regain its competitive edge. In an effort to maintain its profit margins, Albertsons took several steps to lower costs. One was to replace some of the traditional checkout stands with automated self-checkout facilities. After making the change in some test stores, the company performed a study to determine whether the average purchase through a self-checkout facility was less than the average purchase at the traditional checkout stand.

To conduct the test, a random sample of 125 customer transactions at the self-checkout was obtained, and a second random sample of 125 transactions from customers using the traditional checkout process was obtained. The following statistics were computed from each sample:

Self-Checkout Traditional Checkout –x 1  $45.68 –x 2  $78.49 s1  $58.20 s2  $62.45 n1 125 n2  125 Based on these sample data, what should be concluded with respect to the average transaction amount for the two checkout processes? Test using an a  0.05 level.