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“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

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Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#681

Post by fab13n »

CurrentB wrote: post #543

It it just me or are people massively underestimating this? I feel like the impact of this will be close to the self driving car in terms of a vast rollout of massive new automation. I've been to Amazon Go a few times, the small one in NYC, and the selection is underwhelming but the walk out experience is amazing. And since then I've fantasized about just walking out pretty much every time I'm in a grocery store. The…

It's huge for stuff you'll still bother to go and fetch yourself in a physical shop.

In the future, I'll expect more and more stuff to come to me, rather than having to go and fetch them myself.

Luckily for Amazon, they'll also be in charge of that.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#682

Post by NikhilVerma »

awb wrote: post #379
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…

And why is this a standalone site and not inside the Amazon.com portfolio? EDIT: JustWalkout.com was registered anonymously at GoDaddy 7 years ago: https://www.whois.com/whois/justwalkout.com Amazon.com has public DNS contact info: https://www.whois.com/whois/amazon.com There's no TM or R marks around the term "Just Walk Out" on the page and no Favicon. Are we sure this is real?

Their SSL certificate was issued by Amazon. So it seems legit.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#683

Post by morganvachon »

altec3 wrote: post #266
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I've been sitting here thinking Amazon was going to spool up tons of retail locations that leveraged their tech to create a massive moat that other Brick & Mortars couldn't possibly compete with. In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the implementation, then sell it to the world.

And they didn't just do that with AWS. They did it with ecommerce as well. Become the biggest online retailer, nail the implementation, then get everyone else to jump on your platform.

They are following it up with shipping and logistics. Amazon has been pushing us hard to switch from FedEx/UPS/USPS to using them for most of our packages, and it's working. Our defect rate is less with Amazon despite all of the anecdotal evidence of lazy/incompetent last mile Amazon personnel, and our rep bends over backwards to make sure she can fix any issues and get us what we need. She's sending us free label printers even though ours are generic enough to work with all carriers including Amazon, just because the labels for them are less expensive.

After shipping with Amazon for our non-Amazon orders for six months, we've moved about 80% of our shipments to them because they save us that much time, hassle, and money. FedEx picks up almost all the rest, with a handful of packages going out UPS and Postal due to address requirements, or customer preference on phone orders (all online orders are Amazon/eBay/website where we limit shipping choices; we are about 60% Amazon, 30% eBay, 8% website, and 2% phone orders on a typical day).

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#684

Post by bluGill »

bloodorange wrote: post #188
bluGill wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2.99 at 6.5% tax is $3.18 (after rounding). Buy two and your total cost is $3.37. The government don't not want to be cheated out of that penny. (it adds up over all the people buying stuff)

I genuinely can't tell if you are being serious. If you are being serious, then how do you account for the behaviour of the customer possibly changing based on how the price is displayed (i.e including or excluding taxes etc.)

Since in the US tax is traditionally never included in any state (exception: gasoline is always advertised with all tax), consumers are not changing behavior. I suspect there are a few who split purchases knowing the above, but for the most part few people do.

Also, you seem to be putting more thought into this than our government has.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#685

Post by Nasrudith »

AllanHoustonSt wrote: post #467
ndelage wrote: post #352

The last few times I've gone to my local pharmacy (Rite Aid) I've watched a single cashier operate more than one checkout registers at a time. She did this because it took so long to process payment and print a receipt -- e.g. while she waited for my payment to go through (via credit card) she'd ring up the next customer on another register. She's trying to ring up the most customers per minute possible and using a s…

I feel like self checkout kiosks already solve this. Commodotized Amazon Go tech is a minute improvement in convenience compared to traditional cashier -> self checkout.

The crucial difference is self checkouts displace the labor onto the end user with more or less the same delay as a checkout. This will remove both the delay and the checkout work task.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#686

Post by asymptotically2 »

inkaudio wrote: post #425
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…

There are number of tech companies directly competing in this space: https://standard.ai/ https://grabango.com/ https://www.getzippin.com/ https://www.v7labs.com/retail https://www.getzippin.com/ There are competitive options, if you’re in retail you do not have to give Amazon all your “retail data” or use their tech.

There are also existing cashierless stores in China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QKrHi-G9WQ

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#687

Post by Aeolun »

samatman wrote: post #285
Aeolun wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with listing tax inclusive prices. Is it really that much of a mental effort to add 7%?

Absolutely, large swaths of the population can't do simple mental arithmetic like this at all. The US system discriminates against those people, no denying it. That said, I'm sure our European friends are absolutely drooling at the thought of a 7% VAT...

I’m not sure that’s unfair, because they ostensibly all learned it in elementary school.

If they willfully forget/ignore something as basic at that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#688

Post by lm28469 »

monkin wrote: post #542
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…

> 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. Is this still a thing? In Poland most shops allows you to scan and pay for products in matter of seconds without any help. No lines, no hassle. :)

It's been like that in most supermarkets I went in the last 5 years. I don't really see the point of amazon's version. And from what I read it doesn't even work yet. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/amazo...

I'd be really impressed if any large supermarket chain (outside of the US) would be ok to be so tightly coupled to amazon for virtually no benefits compared to self checkout. It's like a lot of what SV is pumping out, half assed solution to non existing problems.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#689

Post by lm28469 »

npo9 wrote: post #276
aguyfromnb wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What about self checkout or just adding more lanes ?

This really doens't sound like a problem that needs amazon and "technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning"

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#690

Post by thunderrabbit »

hunter2_ wrote: post #648
mkolodny wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they don't want to draw attention to how many people are going to lose their jobs because of this yet. Cashier is the #2 job in the US (by number of people employed) [0]. If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there. That would make this rollout a lot less exciting for a lot of people. I hope Amazon comes up with an awesome way to help the cashiers this technology replaces.…

The third-last FAQ entry speaks precisely to your comment: > Will people still be working in stores with Just Walk Out technology? > Yes. Retailers will still employ store associates to greet and answer shoppers' questions, stock the shelves, check IDs for the purchasing of certain goods, and more - their roles have simply shifted to focus on more valuable activities.

I wonder what percentage of people will still have a job there?
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