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Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

bloomberg.com

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Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#81

Post by twothamendment »

ghaff wrote: post #68
thedarkginger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the article stresses repeatedly that Amazon is all-in on produce... I think this is a big question for their ML approach. One of the annoying parts of not-really-self-checkout that is available in big grocery stores today is that you have to scroll through a screen, choose the correct brand (i.e. Dole Banana), and then weigh it before it prices your order. Wonder what their strategy is to price variable weight…

Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I really don't care for self-checkout in grocery stores. Sure, self-checkout is mostly OK so long as you're swiping small boxes of barcoded stuff. But get to produce and it's a mess. I basically won't use self-checkout if I have any non-barcoded merchandise. (Which basically describes every time I go to a grocery store.)

Yes - no bar code? I won't self check, but also the large items that won't fit in the bag. I learned the hard way that it can take too long for them to get the self checkout lane to stop crying about how I didn't put a 10' pipe in the bag. Unless I have one or two well marked, small items, I avoid the self checkout.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#82

Post by strebler »

gwern wrote: post #14
thedarkginger wrote: post #4

I know this discusses a few strategic plays Amazon is making but shortfalls of the self-checkout project (AmazonGo) are interesting: "In its video touting Amazon Go, the company said it was aiming to open the site to the public in “early 2017,” and it hasn’t provided an update to that timing. But the technology has been crashing in tests when the store gets too crowded and requires human quality control, people watch…

When the demo was released, people had a lot of questions about how the cameras would deal with occlusions and products being covered up by bodies and odd angles. Recognizing and localizing and tracking a single person picking up individual items slowly is a much easier task than tracking many people in a crowd crisscrossing and blocking the camera constantly; that it is apparently failing in exactly the scaled up re…

I had the same question about cameras dealing with those issues, but this article says "Products are embedded with tracking devices that pair with customers’ phones to charge their accounts". It sounds like this means every product has an RFID / other tag, rather than using computer vision.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#83

Post by ghaff »

twothamendment wrote: post #81
ghaff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I really don't care for self-checkout in grocery stores. Sure, self-checkout is mostly OK so long as you're swiping small boxes of barcoded stuff. But get to produce and it's a mess. I basically won't use self-checkout if I have any non-barcoded merchandise. (Which basically describes every time I go to a grocery store.)

Yes - no bar code? I won't self check, but also the large items that won't fit in the bag. I learned the hard way that it can take too long for them to get the self checkout lane to stop crying about how I didn't put a 10' pipe in the bag. Unless I have one or two well marked, small items, I avoid the self checkout.

The particular fascination of big box home improvement stores has seemed a bit odd given the number of items that don't fit with the model. Sure a lot of small purchases do but many don't.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#84

Post by chronicx0 »

illumin8 wrote: post #17
wongarsu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are attacking regular stores' checkout systems already. We call those people shoplifters. And our normal method of dealing with them (have a human that catches a few of them to deter the more law-abiding citizens) will work equally well in a checkout-less store. The big new challenge is telling the difference between a shoplifter and a normal software error. But that is only relevent for the most sophisticated…

Exactly. And, since you have to scan your smartphone before entering, they already have your name, address, credit card details, etc., so shoplifting would be extremely risky. Most teenage shoplifters might be able to outrun a security guard that saw them leaving with unpaid items, but what good does it do you when the store already has all your personal details and can simply send the police to pick you up at home?

What if 4 shoppers are wearing the same black Google hoodie, noogler hat, and walk closely as a group? Good luck on phone or visual localization and/or tracking.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#85

Post by bogomipz »

trome wrote: post #36
bogomipz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say what happens when they screw up the order? Is it your responsibility to wait around for someone to come collect the wrong parts of the order?

Depends, twice I've had to ship it back, and once Amazon told me there were no returns and refunded me (Samsung Evo+ 64GB that only did 6MB/s, rated at minimum 10MB/s). That being said, I need to throw that MicroSD card away, whenever I use it in a camera or single board computer instead of a tested Evo, it causes poor performance.

Oh I was asking about the food ordering specifically. I was curious how errors are resolved with perishable items.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#87

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

bertlequant wrote: post #86

At some pt I have to wonder, just because you can do something does that mean you should? I don't really look forward to a future where Amazon is involved in every business possible. Especially if it's Weyland-Yutani-esque and involved in cave exploration.

Is Amazon that much different from the Chinese state-owned or heavily-state-influenced behemoths? Cost has to be driven down somehow if several billion people are to live on a planet without straining its ecosystem past a breaking point.
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