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posted by janrinok on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the got-to-give-it-a-try dept.

Amazon's much-heralded convenience store of the future, Amazon Go, may seem like a crazy experiment. But the company plans to open as many as six more of these storefronts this year, multiple people familiar with the company's plans have told Recode.

Some of the new high-tech stores are likely to open in Amazon's hometown of Seattle, where the first location is based, as well as Los Angeles, these people said. It's not clear if Amazon will open up Go stores in any other cities this year.

In Los Angeles, Amazon has held serious talks with billionaire developer Rick Caruso about bringing a Go store to The Grove, his 600,000-square-foot outdoor shopping Mecca, two of these people said.

And in Seattle, Amazon had identified at least three locations for additional Go stores as of last year, according to one source.

[...] News of the planned expansion of the Amazon Go concept is sure to set off fresh concerns about the great societal challenges that come with the type of automation that Amazon is inventing. Since the Amazon Go model does not involve customers checking out, there are no cashiers working in the stores.

Source: ReCode

Also Amazon reportedly plans to open more of its futuristic, cashierless stores this year


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  • (Score: 2) by arslan on Monday February 26 2018, @02:30AM (2 children)

    by arslan (3462) on Monday February 26 2018, @02:30AM (#643696)

    Sure, they'll be a proportion of society that will cheat and con. They business question is then does the cost savings in automating away the legacy workforce & overhead, cutting out the payment middleman like credit cards and increase legit customer's satisfaction (due to time savings and less friction) and hopefully increase revisits offset all the negatives, one being the con cases, among other negatives...

    I'm sure Amazon has enough smart folks to do some high level numbers to stack those pros/cons before they ventured into execution. There's no better way to get certainty than to execute on theory and see if it pans out.

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  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Monday February 26 2018, @03:31AM (1 child)

    by tftp (806) on Monday February 26 2018, @03:31AM (#643727) Homepage

    They won't be able to cut off the c/c business. OK, within the Amazon property employees can buy with automatic link to their salary. Even that has specifics, given the taxes. But once these stores go forth and multiply, their customers won't be limited to Amazon workforce. The newcomers sure as hell will be using credit cards - just because it is stupid to refuse a free credit for a month. The savings will be only on workers - but they not only man the checkouts, they also refill the shelves, clean the spills and otherwise manage the store. If there are standard self-checkout kiosks, there is nothing to gain by training a camera at every customer and every shelf. Amazon is solving a problem that not only does not need a solution, but one that actively should not be solved - stores are an easy place for a junior to start his career and for a stumbled adult to find a guaranteed, albeit cheap, job.

    • (Score: 2) by arslan on Monday February 26 2018, @09:54PM

      by arslan (3462) on Monday February 26 2018, @09:54PM (#644229)

      When I say credit card I meant physical cards. The CC comps are still there linked to Amazon pay, much like how they are linked to Paypal. That is already available long before Amazon Go came about.

      I would disagree that there is no problem needing a solution. From my perspective as a retail buyer I'd say there is, and would welcome the day we can get rid of the checkout clerk and long queues that follow both the manned and unmanned checkout kiosk. Amazon probably sees a bunch of other problems as an industry player in the fast moving consumer goods sector.

      I do agree that the disruption to the low-end retail workforce will not be pretty. Imho from a broader perspective, this digital renaissance is at odds to how our capitalist society works today, but rather than avoiding the former we should really look at tweaking the latter. Why should humanity be held back by dated practices?