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from the amazon-knows-your-spouse-better-than-you-do dept.
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: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday December 06 2016, @01:33PM
Cost may not be an issue. The camera and processing power are relatively cheap, and employees are expensive.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 06 2016, @02:35PM
Possibly you overestimate the pay of your average stock clerk or cashier.
Surely they need more than one HD webcam per 10 sq ft. Probably one cam per sq foot is about right if they want to literally watch every shelf space and create 3-d models of the shoppers.
Also the margins are extremely low in the retail business. 100% markup sounds like a lot but somehow by the time you're done paying the bills, single digit profits are where its at. That in itself is disturbing as low profit high touch businesses are where capital goes to die, its not really a "start-up tech skys the limit" field. Its like a bank going into Real Estate investment in Florida or Arizona (notorious bank-killing states during the last bubble pop) moth to a flame.