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Amazon Go

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Re: Amazon Go

#901

Post by Spooky23 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #785
Spooky23 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. The customer is always right. You start doing stuff like that it will bite you back 10x.

> The customer is always right. This adage only works when marginal value of a customer is high, and monetary preferences aren't utterly dominating customer's thought process. Business dealing with necessities, or ones where demand outweights supply, aren't like that - that's why in a grocery store, customer is trash. There's plenty more where he/she came from.

Have you ever worked in grocery?

The customers tend to be brand loyal, and the lifetime value of a customer is very high (family with 2.4 kids and a dog is minimum $10k/year in gross sales), so when you start banishing customers for doing things that they may not even realize that they did, they will loudly tell everyone they know what a bunch of assholes you are! The $25 roast will cost you $500.

If I stop shopping at a local grocery that uses a loyalty card for two weeks, they will immediately begin sending coupons worth 10-20% of my average transaction value to get me back. The ROI of giving away $20 at a pretty low margin implies a high value.

Re: Amazon Go

#902

Post by samstave »

protomyth wrote: post #848
samstave wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If youre on EBT/WIC, what % of those folks have both a smartphone, Amazon Go installed AND an amazon account?

So Amazon Go is a defacto rich peoples store? Sadly, this will probably be a selling point for some. You would be surprised how many EBT/WIC folks have smart phones since they are often part of educational plans and back-to-work initiatives. It was often easier to order product off Amazon than locally (gift cards, debit cards).

I wasn't meaning it as a class-based statement... just that I don't expect one of these to pop-up in either oakland or the tenderloin in the next few decades...

Re: Amazon Go

#903

Post by chris_7 »

preordained wrote: post #850
mmanfrin wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 3.5 million truckers in America. I welcome self-driving trucks, however.

You welcome them how soon? If all those workers were displaced tomorrow, is that good?

Living in New York and nearly being run down by "professional" drivers daily... tomorrow sounds good. Taxis too, please.

Oooh, will that stop the incessant and generally illegal HONKHONKHONKHOOOOONK too? Yes please!

Re: Amazon Go

#904

Post by OMGTehAwsome »

qyv wrote: post #769
0xfeba wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry but if you cost the store $25 by leaving a damned ROAST in the cereal aisle, I would be perfectly happy to never let you in the store again. Wouldn't a better solution be to charge the customer for the roast and if they complain, you explain: "sorry, you didn't put it on the proper shelf, the technology considers that as a purchase", and possibly eat the cost in the form of some incentive to come back to…

There are many potential reasons that an item could be put back in the improper spot on a shelf that does not induce a loss for the store nor is malicious by the shopper. Things very often get put back into the same shelf but a different position. But what about this: What is to stop someone from pulling items out of other people carts?

There are no carts, just bags. This doesn't appear to be a replacement for traditional grocery stores but rather corner stores or bodegas, so there isn't a need for them.

Re: Amazon Go

#905

Post by wallacoloo »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #871
wallacoloo wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of social issues that a system like this might entail, in addition to privacy: 1. Not everyone has a smartphone. 2. Not everyone has an electronic account with which to pay (or for practical reasons, they can't use it frequently). And the people that fall into those categories aren't just fringe. Parents give dollar bills to their kids & send them to the store to fetch food. People without established…

Can't people with no credit open a checking account and get a debit card? I was never askef for a credit score when opening one of those.

Probably - I don't know the procedure. I do know most people consider debit to be a less secure (for the consumer) form of payment than credit or cash though.

Re: Amazon Go

#906

Post by pshc »

tekklloneer wrote: post #886
pshc wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I go to coffee shops for the productive atmosphere. I think baristas (and bartenders and sommeliers) will always have a place even in a post-work world.

How does a barista offer that, versus simply visiting an interface (app, browser), clicking a button, and having it delivered to your table by a robot within five minutes? I don't think the "productive atmosphere" concept is fully realized yet. Imagine how happy starbucks would be if they could reclaim all of that bar area for more seating (and more customers ordering more drinks!) or less area and less rent.

Ah, you got me! Yes, it's the overall atmosphere, not just the productivity. The romance is admittedly a part of it. I'm not opposed to robots making coffee, but I also suspect that in a post-work world, I'd be a part-time barista for the social-cool factor and mechanical-aromatic satisfaction.

(I can't help but think that half the attraction of Starbucks is having chipper college students hand-write a personalized drink order...)

Re: Amazon Go

#907

Post by megablast »

Spooky23 wrote: post #259
makecheck wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting benefit of the “detect removal from shelf” concept is that there might finally be a time stamp associated with the removal of the item. Right now, if you see a random perishable item sitting on a shelf, you HAVE to throw it away because it could have been there for a long time. On the other hand, if you can see that some Frozen Peas were only taken off the shelf 2 minutes ago, you can just put them ba…

Good luck with that. The customer is always right. You start doing stuff like that it will bite you back 10x.

The customer is always right just means that if the customer wants a bright pink top with bring pink shorts, they are right.

It doesn't mean every stupid thing the customer does is right.

Re: Amazon Go

#908

Post by bradbatt »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #688
crazypyro wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to save jobs that are no longer the most efficient way of solving a problem is not the way to promote the value of humanity, in my opinion. People want groceries as cheap and fast as possible. They don't go to the grocery store for social interaction and forcing the majority of people to pay extra for something that only the minority get value out of is not a competitive strategy. If humanity were to take your…

Have you considered that life isn't all about efficiency? People shop because of the experience. This is why book stores are coming "back," eBooks just aren't cutting it for people. This is why "smart lights" won't ever truly take off, people don't want to log onto an app to turn their lights off.

I have to disagree with this one. I have Hue lights and I rarely ever use the app to turn them on or off. When I come home and it is after sunset the lights come on automatically based on geolocation. When I leave they turn off.

Also, I can walk downstairs and say "Alexa, turn on the living room lights" and my Amazon Echo turns them on. Same thing to turn them off again. That's extremely convenient...way, way more convenient than walking around and turning 4-5 lamps on and off.

They have come way down in price to the point to where you can either pay $20 for a smart bulb versus $10-12 for a standard LED.

Will be interesting to see what happens though...I do agree that life isn't just all about efficiency. But people certainly do enjoy convenience.

Re: Amazon Go

#909

Post by iainmerrick »

rtkwe wrote: post #896
iainmerrick wrote: post #883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's not typically tied directly to your online account (as far as I know!) Retailers are definitely pushing in that direction with things like Bluetooth LE beacons that talk to your phone. Plus store loyalty cards and the like, which have been around for decades. But those schemes have mostly been opt-out, apart from those weird stores that require membership cards.

I just don't really see how associating it with an online account makes it much better or worse than the normal recording that'd done in stores everyday.

Really? I may be on CCTV in every store I go into right now, but (as far as I know!) they don't look me up on Facebook etc, log which shelves I'm browsing, and track me across multiple stores.

Maybe I'm underestimating what other companies are already doing, but it seems like Amazon is pushing the envelope here.

I guess governments are increasingly doing this kind of thing too, and that's also very troubling, but the silver lining is that at least they aren't doing it so they can bombard me with targeted ads.

Re: Amazon Go

#910

Post by xs »

If I bring the whole family shopping with me, does everyone need a phone app and stuff?
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