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“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

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Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#701

Post by zimpenfish »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #588
smeyer wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What brand grocery store was that?

Most UK supermarkets offer this service. You need a store scanner that you pick up with the trolly. Scan everything, then pay and leave. You'll get stopped very occasionally for staff to check you aren't stealing. But they don't do much other than make you pay for things you haven't scanned. "Oh the kids put it in there without me noticing."

ASDA, at least, offer an iOS app that lets you scan as you go. Which is handy because the scanners are at the wrong* end of the store for me.

(I believe M&S has something similar?)

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#702

Post by TremendousJudge »

o-__-o wrote: post #624
spiorf wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a new phone in a store, then bought a cover and a screen protecton on amazon. It sent me a notification: "We think you might be interested in a new phone". It's pretty obvious that people don't go around shopping for screen protectors and then buy phones to match.

Just realized all the info I’m giving Amazon by using the app. Time to change up habits for 2020

I do all my product searching in incognito mode

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#703

Post by mortivore »

foobiekr wrote: post #636
CurrentB wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you close your eyes and visualize a grocery store experience where you put stuff directly into your tote bags or your backpack and walk right out, with 0 time spent on anything after you have everything you need, this doesn't seem like something completely beyond self-checkout to you? I've used plenty of self checkout lanes too and it's roughly the same satisfaction as going in a cashier lane. It's still X + Y…

It sounds great until something goes wrong.

Everything sounds great until something goes wrong.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#704

Post by TremendousJudge »

chuniverse wrote: post #632
eyegor wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this experience every time I buy something. Monitor? Needs more monitors. Yoga mats? Clearly opening a studio. Trash bags? This man hasn't learned about dumpsters. Of course this pays off eventually, but it seems like they could come up with a better strategy when they have a bunch of purchase history.

Nope. The fact is after you purchase something you are still in market for that product. So keeping you in a marketing segment will always be more profitable to the advertising team. Yes, you might be finished shopping now that you have finally decided on the best toilet seat, but the marketing segment that you fall into will always convert higher than a control group. There is just way too much data to confirm this.

It may make sense statistically, but for an individual customer it's just a strange experience. Look around this thread for all the comments pointing out the same thing, and wonder if a shopping app that was truly good would have all that people pointing out such strange behavior

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#705

Post by athenot »

paulmd wrote: post #344
athenot wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was true 5 years ago but with the quality issues on Amazon, I've found myself buying more on eBay.

Yeah, ebay has much better buyer protections unless the item is Fulfilled By Amazon (which carries a cost premium). eBay prices also tend to be better. If you're going to buy cheap chinese crap anyway, just cut out the middleman. Finally, Amazon's marketplace is just not navigable. Their search is pathetically bad, and this is nothing new, it's been a common complaint for years. Some fairly massive amount of their tr…

Yes! Amazon's search has been driving me crazy but it went from bad (loose interpretation of what I typed with a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff) to worse (adding more sponsored results, i.e. even less what I want).

Their recommendation engine for related prducts used to be nice but that's been replaced by sponsored products which lowers the quality.

Now, the only way I use Amazon's search is when I have a SKU or part number and type it in directly. But I also do that in Google and often find the same thing elsewhere at similar or less cost (including shipping, though to be fair it may take a day or 2 longer).

eBay's search is still one of the best for me, in that it respects the keywords I put in and allows for extended query syntax to really hunt something down (which then can be turned into a saved search).

One of the most creative things I found on eBay was tool rental. I needed a tool to replace the bearings on my washing machine, and a seller was selling one explicitely as a rental: tool was charged about $120, with $35 shipping. When done, sent it back for a refund. The "shipping" included the rental fee and shipping both ways.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#706

Post by gwbas1c »

What if I want a paper receipt? What if I want to pay in cash? What if I want to confirm that the system correctly tallied what I'm buying?

I'm extremely skeptical of email receipts because I don't want to be enrolled in someone's daily SPAM list.

IMO, I'm going to avoid shops that use this system until they're correctly regulated.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#707

Post by panarky »

mkolodny wrote: post #610
derefr wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprising to me that Whole Foods still doesn't have this tech integrated. You'd think that'd be the "beta" step after the Amazon Store's "alpha" step.

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.…

Amazon Go stores have plenty of employees, I'd bet they're not saving anything on labor.

The benefit is a much better customer experience, not labor savings.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#708

Post by TheEzEzz »

anon102010 wrote: post #604
TheEzEzz wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jordan from Standard here. We absolutely believe that retailers will prefer to get this new technology from providers like us as opposed to Amazon, their biggest competitor. So far Amazon has also not shown their technology deployed in an existing store, rather than an Amazon Go. We're actively working on being the first to demonstrate this. Stay tuned over the next couple of months.

I've used amazon go - the tech worked very well for me. They have at least 4 or 5 stores in San Francisco alone - I'd guess 20+ at least if you include Seattle or wherever else they are operating. I haven't see the go grocery store yet. Can you give us a sense of how many transactions standard is doing every day with it's tech that's further along / more deployed than Amazon? At least the SF location I visited had st…

Amazon is certainly in the lead in terms of total locations. All of their locations are stores they own, however. The race right now is to show this tech working in existing stores, with a fairly light (aka scalable) install process. We have multiple installs in existing stores at the moment, running in "shadow mode" to confirm the accuracy is the system. These sites are predicting the carts of hundreds of people a day, and seeing good results.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#709

Post by blowski »

Naracion wrote: post #565
tmilard wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, IBM "thinks" the future. Other companies build them. Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key

May I suggest a rephrasing for that? Execution can bring profit. Ideas might not. History is full of examples of visionaries coming up with ideas that have inspired and fueled others--in some cases whole industries have been founded on these ideas. For instance, Doug Engelbart gave the "Mother of All Demos" in 1968 [1]. It was a proof of concept, but the ideas he talked about were implemented by other companies--who…

"Ideas are unlikely to have any immediate monetary value until they are executed" is more accurate, but doesn't roll off the tongue so easily.
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