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Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#41

Post by zurn »

sailingparrot wrote: post #15
alexf95 wrote: post #2

Ok but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.

From a business point of view you obvisously don't need to be accessible to 100% of potential customers to be viable. People without smartphones are probably less Shops without access ramps lose probably more customers, and yet there are plenty of them.

Smartphone penetration seems to be 40-80% in industrialized countries, according to 2019 figures from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_smartphon...

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#42

Post by alexf95 »

aboringusername wrote: post #35
alexf95 wrote: post #2

Ok but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.

Then you're excluded, simple as that. We're rapidly approching the point where you're: a) Expected to have, engage with and be active on a smartphone b) Be accessible via the mobile network (have an active phone number that can get SMS) c) Be "always online", frequently checking the bank in 'real time' to verify transactions, account balance etc d) Have battery life on your device. It's no good if you have just 5% an…

It does appear like that, I guess it just isn't very apparent to me yet how smartphone dependent we are. The change just kinda creeped up.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#43

Post by m12k »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #21
ramraj07 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broken window fallacy argument - we can’t artificially keep doing demonstrably less efficient things for the sake of jobs, it has never worked and never will. If it becomes a problem then we have to deal with it by finding new avenues to employ people or not need employment to live a life.

That’s assuming that efficiency is the only thing we should care about in society.

Efficiency is the reason we can have this conversation instead of standing out in a field, manually trying to coax a living out of the unforgiving soil every day. Efficiency isn't the goal, but it's one of the best tools we have for improving what a human life can be - like for example giving us enough leisure time to be able to read, have hobbies, do art or spend more time with loved ones.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#44

Post by vybbc »

raverbashing wrote: post #29
alexf95 wrote: post #2

Ok but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.

Thankfully the Swedes are not as luddites as the Germans and adopt more easily solutions that make their lives easier In fact I wouldn't be surprised if these stores were cashless, in several Scandinavian countries shop attendants handling change manually are already on their way out

Yawn. Hail to user tracking and dictatorial fintech startups? No thanks.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#45

Post by fogihujy »

gumby wrote: post #10
alexf95 wrote: post #2

Ok but what if I wanted to shop without a smartphone, or don't own one? Don't get me wrong this is great for the current situation but like all things it doesn't only have good things about it.

This is Scandinavia. Such a situation would be extremely rare and if that were the case visiting this shop would be a minor issue by comparison.

There's plenty of older-generation people without a smart phone in the Nordics. It doesn't matter though, since the smart-phone carrying majority will be enough to keep a store running in most places.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#46

Post by konschubert »

So this is basically run on a trust basis, right? And if you steal, you will eventually get caught on video and be blocked from entering the store?

I can imagine this working well in small villages. You'll get a few thieves and vandals, but eventually you can weed them out.

Pretty genius.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#47

Post by the-dude »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #36

I used to work at a major multi-billion dollar retailer. One of the biggest complaints from customers was waiting at the check out line, especially for small, quick orders. This is the future of grocery stores, like it or not. Employees are expensive and make mistakes, whereas machines are cheap, don't take breaks, and work pretty reliably once you set them up correctly.

My favorite supermarket has regular and 'quick' checkouts. I enjoy the interaction with the employees.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#48

Post by ghaff »

alexf95 wrote: post #42
aboringusername wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you're excluded, simple as that. We're rapidly approching the point where you're: a) Expected to have, engage with and be active on a smartphone b) Be accessible via the mobile network (have an active phone number that can get SMS) c) Be "always online", frequently checking the bank in 'real time' to verify transactions, account balance etc d) Have battery life on your device. It's no good if you have just 5% an…

It does appear like that, I guess it just isn't very apparent to me yet how smartphone dependent we are. The change just kinda creeped up.

That's how most changes happen.

For example, "we" didn't collectively decide one day we absolutely need to have credit cards. But if you don't have one now, there are a ton of things you can't really do.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#49

Post by m12k »

aloisdg wrote: post #37
ejolto wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lifvs uses artificial intelligence to work out what stock to order for each store The "AI" is an if test if stock

You can use statistics to determine what can of stock you should favor (e.g. winter clothes vs summer clothes) and the quantity (more Christmas food in December less after). If you have enough data from previous years or a good heuristics, you can start this one easily. Even a plain old markov chains could help.

I'm stunned that week after week, I'll come across the same shelf, with one variant of a thing sold out by midweek, and the unpopular variant next to it virtually untouched, as always. The amount of statistics or programming required to prevent this, and balance the stock to what the market shows that it wants, is fairly trivial, and yet my local supermarket has failed to do so for several decades now.
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