Amazon Go and its impact on the retail industry

Last year, Amazon opened its first Amazon Go store in Seattle, a physical grocery store specially made for Amazon customers. It has given Amazon users the ability to buy groceries in person instead of online. This type of store can be considered innovative compared to traditional grocery stores as there are no checkout lines at all. Customers enter the store by using the Amazon app, and then put their phones away to start grocery shopping. Everything they pick up is automatically added to, or removed from their virtual shopping cart. The Amazon Go store does not have any registers, meaning that customers can just leave the store without waiting in line. Everything will automatically be charged on the customer’s Amazon user account. Amazon calls this a “just walk out” technology, where the company is using computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion technologies to put this concept in place.

The Amazon Go store has several impacts on the retail industry. First of all, as Amazon Go relies on technologies such as computer vision, it will give competitors in the retail industry an incentive to speed up projects including Internet of Things as well. For example, it is said that Walmart is also working on a similar ‘Grab-and-go’ store for the near future. Secondly, even though retailers have to pay for set-up costs, the elimination of cashiers, card processing fees and registers will save them money in the long run. This means that, in the end, retailers will make more profit out of “just walk out” technology grocery stores.

However, there is still some doubt whether we, as consumers, are willing to accustom to such big changes. Are we ready to give up the status-quo? Let me know what you think! I would love to read some of your opinions.