Two years after opening the world’s first cashier-less convenience store ‘Amazon Go’, Amazon has expanded on its concept, opening a larger-format cashier-less grocery store. A new report from the User Experience Strategies Service (UXS) at Strategy Analytics outlines a consumer-focused evaluation of the Amazon Go Grocery experience. While ”Just Walk Out” shopping has the potential to disrupt retail, its broader impacts remain relatively niche.
Key report findings include:
- ”Just Walk Out” shopping is exorbitantly expensive to implement and maintain. This concept is impractical for many other grocers or general merchandise stores, much less other use cases with high inventory and checkout stations.
- Frictionless retail is also unsuitable for many other retail verticals beyond grocery and convenience. For example, consumer electronics such as smartphones and television shopping are better suited for a concierge sales approach than an impersonal shop-and-go approach.
- Stores that encourage trying-before-buying – e.g. clothing stores with fitting rooms or on-site alterations – are also not well-suited for this concept, as shoppers are far less likely in practice to return a “retrieved-but-unpurchased” item to a shelf.
Derek Viita, Senior Analyst and report author commented, “While not directly relevant to other industries, if cashier-less concepts such as Amazon Go become more widespread, we would expect to see continued growth in consumer adoption of forms on contactless payments, which Strategy Analytics already expects to happen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Added Lisa Cooper, Director UXS, “At a macro level, Amazon Go is also proof that a complex system of cameras and sensors can successfully be deployed in large-scale settings with an impressive level of accuracy. This should bring confidence to developers of other complex camera and sensor systems, such as vehicle-to-vehicle and autonomous driving applications.”
