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“Just walk out” technology by Amazon
281–290 of 769 posts
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#282Aaaand 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…
Skip [0] lets you scan and pay for items with your phone, so it doesn't require any infrastructure be installed but isn't as simple for the customer.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#283It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.) From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have…
There's no way a cart full of goods will scan properly if you roll through a scanner. RFID scanners don't handle RFID tags being stacked very well.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#284Earlier 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 only good because Ebay is pathetically bad.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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?
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...
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#286It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.) From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have…
While I agree with you totally, you would be surprised the extent to which RFID has permeated almost every market.
It's often not consumer facing, or simply invisible (there's a very good chance your shoes have a chip embedded in their sole...) but there are wide scale, functional examples in retail of exactly what you describe today.
Decathlon, for example, a very large EU sporting goods store has this technology: RFID tags are baked into every product. You fetch your products, throw them all into a basket at checkout, and it instantly "scans" them all.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#287Aaaand 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…
It's interesting that they rolled this out as a thing, but didn't start retrofitting all of their Whole Foods with it. Does it have problems with grocery stores? How does it handle fruits by weight, etc.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#288Whatever happened to the RFID concept where they (not Amazon, but others) previously envisioned attaching small, cheap RFID badges to all items and then you would just do one big, quick scan at the end and it would read all the RFID tags in your cart at once and you could walk out?
I like that idea better, honestly. It's more accurate and doesn't require video monitoring and all sorts of AI/ML/DL algorithms. Though, I don't know the practicality of attaching RFIDs to everything, nor the cost. And I assume some people would try to just rip them off, which I imagine would be the biggest concern, in addition to having the staff attach them to everything.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#289It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.) From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have…
There are RFID based shopping experiences, but I think it's too easy to hack. An RF-shielded shopping bag makes theft too easy. I'm also not sure how accurate the readers are when tags are all piled together.
Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon Go is a convenience store...if convenience stores pick this up then yes, they will shop there.
But sadly, will no longer be able to get a job there...
The Amazon Go I used to visit was maybe 200 square feet in size but had 4-5 people stocking and moving things around. And apparently there are others in the back assisting the cameras and making sandwiches and whatnot.