Amazon
has been giving the media peeks into its Amazon Go set up in Seattle, and the
New York Times has provided a somewhat breathless view of a rather odd shop. It
looks like a subway station, the Times says. Only people with the store’s
smartphone app are allowed inside.
In
fact, the current store is an 1,800-square foot mini-market packed with shelves
of food that you can find in a lot of other convenience stores — soda, potato
chips, ketchup. It also has some food usually found at Whole Foods, the
supermarket chain that Amazon owns.
Clearly,
the Times is well-impressed by this technology that is “mostly tucked away out
of sight, and enables a shopping experience “like no other.” There are no
cashiers or registers anywhere. Shoppers leave the store through the entry
gates, without pausing even to pull out a credit card. Their Amazon account
automatically gets charged for what they take out the door.
There’s
more, the Times says. Products can go straight into a shopping bag without
shopping carts or baskets. Instead, customers put items directly into the
shopping bag they’ll walk out with.
Every
time customers grab an item off a shelf, Amazon says the product is
automatically entered in the electronics shopping cart of their online account.
If customers put the item back on the shelf, Amazon removes it from their
virtual basket.
The
only sign of the technology used floats above the store shelves — arrays of
small cameras, hundreds of them throughout the store. Amazon won’t say much
about how the system works, other than that it involves sophisticated “computer
vision and machine learning” software. Translation: Amazon’s technology can see
and identify every item in the store “without attaching a special chip to every
can of soup and bag of trail mix.”
What
about jobs under this technology? There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers
in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the
technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads, the Times concedes. For now,
Amazon argues that its technology simply changes the role of employees — the
same way it describes the impact of automation on its warehouse workers.
Those
tasks include restocking shelves and helping customers troubleshoot technical
problems. Store employees “mill about” ready to help customers find items, and
there is a kitchen next door with chefs preparing meals for sale in the store.
Because there are no cashiers, an employee sits in the wine and beer section of
the store, checking IDs before customers can take alcohol off the shelves.
Most
people who spend any time in a supermarket understand how vexing the checkout
process can be, with clogged lines for cashiers and customers who fumble with
self-checkout kiosks, the Times lectures.
Overall,
the Times admiringly reports that the Amazon Go, check out process feels rather
like “shoplifting”—although it doesn’t say how it knows what shoplifting feels
like. It is fast, that’s true, finishing up only a few minutes later with an
electronic receipt for purchases. The store even has safeguards against
shoplifting, or spoofing the in-store system, the Times says.
A big
unanswered question is where Amazon plans to take the technology. It won’t say
whether it plans to open more Amazon Go stores, or leave this as a
one-of-a-kind novelty. A more intriguing possibility is that it could use the
technology inside Whole Foods stores, though Amazon says it has “no plans” to do
so.
There’s
even speculation that Amazon could sell the system to other retailers, much as
it sells its cloud computing services to other companies. For now, visitors to
Amazon Go may want to watch their purchases: Without a register staring them in
the face at checkout, it’s easy to overspend, the Times counsels.
Well,
maybe. The Times may wish it had sent a housewife or someone who is responsible
for actually preparing food rather than a tech guy—perhaps someone who could
question the practicality—or, usefulness—of buying one bag of food per trip. It
might have noticed that actual family food buying is really not much at all
like shoplifting.
Certainly,
we know Amazon is good at moving stuff and has a lot of experience in actually
delivering things to consumers. But, we also know that the food business is
brutally competitive and the Go technology will need to compete on price and
cost and timeliness and product appearance and many other things before it can
look forward to laying off some part of the 3.5 million cashiers. Also, the
Times may need to examine the retail process more broadly, maybe even
consulting someone who has shopped on a budget—and, carried in the groceries.
Lots of things to think about as we look to the future of retailing, Washington
Insider believes.