Am I normally unaware of Amazon's new products, or have they been releasing an abnormally high amount of new offerings recently?
Most of the announcements were from AWS re:Invent event: https://reinvent.awsevents.com/
Amazon Go
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Re: Amazon Go
#12Am I normally unaware of Amazon's new products, or have they been releasing an abnormally high amount of new offerings recently?
I believe they are having a conference, so that explains the batch of releases in the past week or so.
Re: Amazon Go
#13Am I normally unaware of Amazon's new products, or have they been releasing an abnormally high amount of new offerings recently?
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Re: Amazon Go
#14When I started reading the description, I thought: "someone finally delivered on that RFID pitch of just walking out of the store". Was surprised that it's actually computer vision.
Same. I remember predictions of RFID-based shopping becoming the norm 10 years ago, but it never happened. Does anyone know why the tech didn't pan out that way?
Re: Amazon Go
#15I wonder how they plan to deal with fraud... some kind of check-in process instead?
> With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout. (No, seriously.) Yes, seems like you check-in with an app.
I saw that, but it sounds vague enough that there a few different scenarios I can think of to attack this service. Like what are they going to do if multiple people are sharing an account, but they only have photos of one?
edit: I just realized how they can deal with that -- take a picture when the person walks in and tie it to the account they scanned. There still seem to be a bunch of fraud issues, but this is certainly interesting.
Re: Amazon Go
#16Technology aside, shoppers are going to feel so weird doing this at the beginning. There's already social anxiety when people pay for things and walk past a security guard, or a security barrier. Whether it's an airport, or a clothes store, or a ticket barrier, there's always a nervousness about being called out. It's bad enough in the Apple Store where you can pay and walk out, this will take some real getting used…
I imagine I'd get over it pretty quickly, especially since waiting in line for the checkout is so dreadful. I really, really hate it.
Re: Amazon Go
#17Am I normally unaware of Amazon's new products, or have they been releasing an abnormally high amount of new offerings recently?
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Re: Amazon Go
#18Companies have been discussing "checkout-less" stores since forever, but nobody has been brave enough to do it due to the perceived threat of shoplifting.
And while shoplifting is a legitimate threat, are non-shoplifters going to be turned into shoplifters without a checkout? Are normal shoplifters stopped by checkouts? These are the core questions, and until it is tested nobody will know for sure.
Target is getting awfully close to this. With their Cartwheel app you're meant to scan all your items as you shop (so it auto-applies coupons and discounts); but they haven't taken it to the next logical step and allowed you to provide your Cartwheel output at the checkout for checking out.
I will say that the way Target has implemented smartphone barcode scanning makes me think that there might be a future in all this. It is extremely painless, they just need to stop kicking you out of the scan screen when it finds a discount (i.e. it doesn't kick you out if no discount is found, but does when a discount IS found, that's problematic for efficiency reasons).
Re: Amazon Go
#19It already feels very weird to me to walk into an Apple store, check out on my own phone, and just walk out with product. This will take some getting used to.
Re: Amazon Go
#20Interesting, i've read about these Store Concepts for years as Test Projects from Rewe in Germany, but they never rolled them out widely. Probably sticking RFID on everything was too expensive. This camera based solution might be better suited for a wide rollout.