Amazon is testing a brick-and-mortar concept store that would allow shoppers to pick items off the shelf and leave without waiting in a line:
Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it has opened a brick-and-mortar grocery store in Seattle without lines or checkout counters, kicking off new competition with supermarket chains.
Amazon Go, the online shopping giant's new 1,800-square-foot (167-square-meter) store, uses sensors to detect what shoppers have picked off the shelf and bills it to their Amazon account if they do not put it back.
The store marks Amazon's latest push into groceries, one of the biggest retail categories it has yet to master. The company currently delivers produce and groceries to homes through its AmazonFresh service.
"It's a great recognition that their e-commerce model doesn't work for every product," said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research, noting that physical stores would complement AmazonFresh. "If there were hundreds of these stores around the country, it would be a huge threat" to supermarket chains, he said.
Also at CNBC, Bloomberg, and The Verge:
It'll feel like shoplifting, except you're actually being watched by more cameras than you can imagine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:59PM
They probably make shoppers pass through the entrances and exits in single file. I imagine there might be gate coming in where, if they can't recognize you based on face req, you have to have your ID scanned by a guard. Going out it's RFID combined with face/body req.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:40PM
> if they can't recognize you based on face req, you have to have your ID scanned by a guard.
They make you check in by smart-phone when you enter the store. You have to have their app on your phone and you walk through a lane where you tap your phone on a scanner pad. If that info isn't in TFA then its a poor article since that info is in all the video news reporting on this story.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:22PM
They make you check in by smart-phone when you enter the store. You have to have their app on your phone
Amazon doesn't even make the app for a lot of phones anymore [mspoweruser.com]. Is this a ploy to get people to switch from an unsupported phone to a Fire Phone just to be able to use the app? Oh wait, that was discontinued too back in mid-2015 [geekwire.com].