What Is Amazon Go?

Just Walk Out: Amazon Go Store

Amazon is a large online retailer. The company does retail in bricks and mortar. Amazon has opened pop-up stores before.

Amazon started as a bookseller and then expanded to include more products. The company is one of the largest online retailers in the world and operates Amazon Web Services, a critical part of internet infrastructure. The company has a few small experiments, but they don't have a lot of physical presence.

Thanks to the proprietary Just Walk Out technology, you can enter the store, pick up your goods, and leave without going through a checkout. The system bills the products you select to your Amazon account when you leave the store. The only thing you need to do is download the Amazon Go app.

Amazon Go stores don't have cashiers. The Just Walk Out system links the products in your basket to your Amazon account when you walk out the store. The cost of your visit is charged to your account.

Some people feel uncomfortable because of the Just Walk Out tech. Amazon has a poor reputation for privacy, worker's rights, and enabling law enforcement technology. A number of large tech companies don't care about your security.

The Amazon Fresh Store

Unlike most shops, there are no cashiers or register. You walk in, pick out what you want, and then leave. Amazon calls it a shopping experience.

Morrisons is rumored to be the launch partner for up to 30 stores in the UK, and the Amazon Fresh store is carrying a large offering of Amazon- branded grocery items. Amazon and Morrisons are working together online delivery. The store is just like a convenience store and doesn't sell anything that is online.

Amazon is using a combination of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and data pulled from multiple sensors to ensure customers are only charged for the stuff they pick up. The cameras are used to track items. There is a mention of "facial recognition" and user information, which may include images of the user, details about the user like height and weight, user fingerprints, and even user purchase history.

Amazon Go: a new intelligence scenario for the workplace

The Amazon Go environment is controlled by an artificial intelligence that follows each customer and notes each item taken and any that may be put back, so no errors are made and there are no charges for products not brought home. The assistant keeps a list of all the customers and deducts the total amount from their account. The project carried out in Seattle shows how technology is threatening some professions.

It is true that there are still physical employees, such as storeroom workers and stock clerks, which may not have difficulty being replaced by robots sooner or later. Amazon has opened up new intelligence data scenarios that had been left unexplored. Information obtained after a lot of purchases can now be cross-checked with information individual behaviors.

Where will advertising go now? Depending on the customers, ad hoc deals could appear on specific items. And freedom?

Cash in the Go Store: AiFi, Grabango and Amazon

Amazon is the biggest name in the market, but it isn't the only one. Two tech start-ups, AiFi and Grabango, are working on systems for big retailers to fight Amazon in a checkout-less technology war. AiFi uses a "sensor fusion" technology that combines data from sensors to increase the accuracy of tracking a product, and also uses camera technology to track what items are removed from the shelf by which individual.

Checkout-free technology has attracted a political backlash with concerns that it can develop into a form of economic injustice, leaving behind those who do not have access to a bank account or credit card and must use cash. Legislation in New Jersey and Philadelphia has banned the use of cashless checkouts. Grabango and AiFi have measures in place to accept cash.

Grabango's system allows you to pay with cash at a cashier, since the technology knows which items you picked up, and you can hand the cashier the money without having to rebag your items. You can use cash to fund a card at a kiosk and then use it to get into the store. Once you exit the store, the purchase amount is deducted from your card.

Amazon's Use Case for Retail Automation

Assuming Amazon systems are able to eliminate employee theft, that would represent around 0.96%. The industry average net profit for convenience stores is 1.8%. Reed discovered that the use case is better suited to retail environments where the customer checks out a variable amount of product.

The environment of Amazon Go is geared towards selection from shelves where the products can be easily lined up. The only way to change the cash desk payroll is to take into account footfall patterns and adjust the hours accordingly. The best guess is that traffic is affected by a lot of factors.

Retail stores are on the side of caution. Even if they are sitting around and doing nothing, they have to keep paying cashiers. You can see that when cash desks are not staffed, supervisors wait until lines are long enough to staff more cash desks, assuming the staff are available to do that.

The commenters noted that there are people making sandwiches. It is possible to model the labor cost as a marginal cost, but that is not a fixed cost. Thompson thinks that Amazon will use its investments to completely roboticize the retail experience, such that shelf stackers and food preparation will be machine driven.

It is possible that Amazon could reduce operational costs to zero. If it degrades the customer experience, it won't do that, so don't expect to see floor walkers disappear any time soon. Amazon might want to check out the way Whole Foods is making the display stacking mandates worse before it gets to that point.

Go Store: A Place to Run High-Level Security on the People Inside Amazon

It's similar to any other convenience store. There are packaged sandwiches, ready-meals and booze in the store. Unlike other stores, it has no cashiers.

People's Amazon accounts are billed based on the items they carry when they leave the store, instead of having to queue at tills. You can download the Amazon Go app before you enter. Amazon has created a store that is able to run high-level of security on the people inside it.

The New York Times reports that there are cameras around the store. They are on shelves and above aisles, but they don't use facial recognition technology. Some human employees are behind the screens at the Go store to train the software and confirm when it has correctly identified a product.

Humans help with product locations and are employed as fresh food chefs. The majority of the data collected by cameras is analysed in the same way that the Amazon Echo does. The Go store is a project that Amazon hasn't announced what it will do in the future.