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“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

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Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#271

Post by jessriedel »

londons_explore wrote: post #124
ttoinou wrote: post #46

In France all our Decathlon (generic sport gear) stores already have RFID chips and checking out (at a free outlet to self checkout or at a cashier who'll basically do the same thing as you) consist of only putting the goods in a basket, the recognition / scanning of the RFID chip is very good and fast. If you walk out with goods you didn't buy the guard will have a notification on his smartphone with the list of unp…

It's still at the ~8cents per item pricerange. Metal cans require a different kind of more expensive tag. Thats still to much for groceries where items are typically only ~$2.50, and the staff time to scan a barcode is ~$0.01

Do you have a reference for that ~8 cent figure? I thought it had dropped below a penny.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#272

Post by gsich »

callmeal wrote: post #261

From TFA: >Shoppers can think of this as similar to typical security camera footage. Great. Now they know not just what I bought, but also what I browsed as I was walking through the store. How long is this footage going to be stored for, and who is it going to be sold to? If there's a crime of happenstance around the store, will everyone who purchased (or looked at purchasing) the item used in the commission of the…

Why would Amazon sell it? If you think advertising - think again.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#273

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

When I shopped with my wife for the first time, I was a little surprised that before leaving any store, she pulls her cart to the side and carefully goes over the receipt. The reason? Mistakes are made in pricing all of the time. I can’t count how many times things ran up for us at the wrong price. She would always go to the customer service desk and get an adjustment.

I probably missed out on hundreds of dollars just blindly trusting the receipt my whole life. It’s nothing nefarious. Systems have bugs.

Takeaway for me is that I can’t use a technology that doesn’t let me verify the price.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#274

Post by pacala »

mherdeg wrote: post #234

This is just an observation that doesn't contribute meaningfully to discussion, but ... Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Fool's joke. Don't know what to make of that. Maybe it's that although retail feels almost exactly the same as it always has, under the hood lots of parts have really been moving, and I just haven't noticed? The parallel observation is that when Gmail was announce…

GMail solved a thorny problem: convince users to browse the web while logged in, preferably with their real life identity. To then collect and aggregate an extensive personalized dossier of their online activity without any fear of legal repercussions. This is priceless.

Then just play the trends: how much space the median user actually uses, user adoption trends, planned storage capacity, storage cost. Possibly the whole GMail never used more than 1% of of Google's total storage capacity.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#275

Post by deanCommie »

bogomipz wrote: post #263
deanCommie wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said…

>"This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take." Can you elaborate? What does this mean exactly?

https://www.google.com/search?q=no+wireless+less+space+than+...

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#276

Post by npo9 »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #256
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

> And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all who can provide something like this? Isn't the better question, "where is the product"? Is it a gimmick? This looks awesome, but until I see it in action, working flawlessly, outside of the Seattle/Silicon Valley nexus, I'm not sure there will be (or needs to be) any competition.

I moved from Seattle to the midwest.

I’ve seen a lot of very intolerable lines in the suburbs. It’s not unusual for me to wait 15 minutes to checkout at Target or Costco and last December I remember a 25 minute line.

I think this is a product. There’s about six different grocery store within a fifteen minute drive from my house. I’ll switch to the first one to implement this system.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#277

Post by thewebcount »

AJ_Newman wrote: post #71
JohnFen wrote: post #3

> In Just Walk Out-enabled stores, shoppers enter the store using a credit card. They don't need to download an app or create an Amazon account. But you may as well. By giving them a CC# you're allowing Amazon to spy on you anyway -- and that's not even mentioning the copious surveillance in such stores in the form of cameras and behavior detection. > If shoppers need a receipt, they can visit a kiosk in the store an…

Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system in order to automatically track your selections? If anything it's full disclosure high level surveillance. I imagine big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart already have sophisticated surveillance systems that attach your card info to visual surveillance systems for Loss Prevention. I've heard of people…

> Is it really spying if you are entering the store with full knowledge that your every move is being watched by a system in order to automatically track your selections?

Very few people going into retail stores understand the extent of the tracking going on. So yes, to the average person, this seems like creepy stalking and/or spying.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#278

Post by r00fus »

I was hoping Apple would implement something like this given they had scan+pay-on-iPhone back in 2010 for Apple Stores.

I have to imagine there are considerable roadblocks for theft prevention and training your shoppers.

Ambiguity turns off paying shoppers and provides an opportunity for thieves.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#279

Post by bogomipz »

What is the target market for this tech then? I feel like grocery stores and pharmacies have already invested somewhat heavily in self checkout kiossk and may also be leery of having Amazon tech in their stores. Is the target market retail 2.0 then, where you design a store from the ground up with this tech?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#280

Post by samatman »

callmeal wrote: post #254
deanCommie wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "lame - no wireless, less space than a nomad" take. Are the prices not listed on the individual items? Purchasers make decisions on a product by product basis, not based on the total. How often are you at the checkout and say "Wait, HOW MUCH is my bill? never mind then, going to go put some things back." Sure, it happens, but it's a 0.0001% use case. edit: OK, fair play to everyone who responded and said…

>Are the prices not listed on the individual items? This is not aimed at deanCommie, but I just want to comment on the massive cognitive dissonance in effect when the issue of listing tax-included prices on individual items in America is raised. Do none of those arguments hold anymore? Why? Because it isn't European tourists asking the question?

European VATs are routinely much higher than any state sales tax in the US.

I can't prove it, but I suspect this is directly related to the fact that in the US system, we see the tax on every purchase.

I admit it's annoying to not have a single number to work with, having to juggle sticker price and real price sucks (the same argument applies to tipping).

But sales taxes are regressive and I don't want them to creep upwards indefinitely. A compromise would be to always display both prices, and make the price-at-register larger.

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