SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Amazon is testing a brick-and-mortar concept store [reuters.com] 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 [cnbc.com], Bloomberg [bloomberg.com], and The Verge [theverge.com]:

It'll feel like shoplifting, except you're actually being watched by more cameras than you can imagine.

Original Submission