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Amazon Go

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Re: Amazon Go

#911

Post by Someone »

cobookman wrote: post #427
Someone wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% is a decent average margin in a grocery store ( http://smallbusiness.chron.com/industry-standard-gross-margi... ). So, it would require a $10 item to break even on a €0.10 tag.

But if using RFID saves them more than the cost of the technology its a win. Basically if Savings from reducing sales persons > Cost of New Technology, you'll add the new tech.

It doesn't have to be strictly cheaper, as it also adds convenience. Not having to wait at the checkout will be worth something to customers, possibly quite a lot in the case of a shop targeting richer customers.

Re: Amazon Go

#912

Post by aninhumer »

camtarn wrote: post #222
Magnets wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesco started that back in the late 90s and Sainsburys also did it 5+ years ago, then Tesco seems to have had another go at it recently. edit: Safeway was first, in 1997 The Camden store illustrates the progress Safeway has made in other directions too. As part of its customer friendliness, Safeway was the first of the major food multiples to introduce self-scanning, the system it calls Shop & Go. http://www.manageme…

Our local store installed them to great fanfare back in the 90s, kept them for about a year, then quietly removed them. I was always very curious as to why: perhaps they didn't get used very much, or perhaps customer satisfaction with them was low.

A Waitrose I lived near had this system, and I think it must have been fairly successful because they put in a second wall of scanning devices shortly before I moved.

Re: Amazon Go

#913

Post by joezydeco »

jaypaulynice wrote: post #846
joezydeco wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my theory above. There's no real inventory of your items until you walk out. What the vision system is doing is matching up your account (scanned upon entry) to the lane you choose when exiting (where the items are scanned).

So the food tags have disposable rfid/bluetooth enabled? Or the computer vision is to be able to scan the bar codes even when they're not visible? Any issue with the amount of radiation in that store?

That's my guess. RFID in the labels or packaging somewhere.

RFID radiation is no different than the radiation coming in and out of the phone in your pocket.

Re: Amazon Go

#914

Post by Gustomaximus »

dogma1138 wrote: post #319
makecheck wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from putting up the odd sign to discourage certain behavior, no, I do not think that stores have any good reason to bend over backwards to keep individual customers. Retail is far too accommodating already. Some people figure that being a “valued customer” means they can be an unending source of sunken costs in time, effort and stress, among other things. And those costs can be multiplied across the other custo…

Stores bake that into the cost of doing business, it's like dropping something and breaking it, in the vast vast majority of cases you won't be charged for it, just be clean up on aisle 3... Heck I've dropped jars or similar things during bagging after paying for them several times and every time I was offered a replacement. Mistakes happen, it's often considerably more expensive to deal with customer complaints espe…

In Australia if you break something in store, they typically wont charge you, but if they do, they have to charge at cost. I wonder if this another reason many stores dont charge. As any store with a larger markup would have to let you know that $55 vase they were trying to sell you cost them $6.

Re: Amazon Go

#915

Post by quickConclusion »

btym wrote: post #874
gr3yh47 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep. full on dystopian tracking was my first thought.

It's not "dystopian" if you're on private property and have accepted their terms of service. You can avoid surveillance by, you know, choosing not to shop there.

If there is no way for me to delete my personal data after i leave the store, i find it distopyan.

If one day all the stores are like this, I guess you may argue I can still grow my own food, and everything is fine.

Re: Amazon Go

#916

Post by wooter »

herval wrote: post #729
Ph0X wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that we save 2 minutes, it's that there's now 10 less job we need. And that may seem as a negative at first, but the idea is that as more and more job get automated, prices should go down until the point where people will not have to work full weeks anymore, or rather, focus on learning and reaching higher education, rather than doing dummy work all day (aka just scanning items non stop for 8 hours).

Is there any evidence that reducing the number of jobs correlates to lower prices?

The last 300 years during which capitalism and tech have done more for the common man than any other ststem in the last 30,000.

Re: Amazon Go

#917

Post by kem »

lmkg wrote: post #398
digler999 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you fire entitled customers. That would be fine in the ages before social media. Now everyone "takes to twitter" and tries to organize a social pitchfork campaign. The victimhood mentality is real. People get off on the celebrity from being wronged by a big bad corporation. It wouldn't be long before some jerk posts a video of himself leaving a roast on the cereal aisle and being '86'ed from the store, then post…

Unless you make it "your thing." Take for example the Alamo Drafthouse, a chain of movies theaters that are aggressive in removing patrons that disrupt other viewers' experience. In the few times that people have tried to complain, the company has generally come out of it for the better. I will admit this strategy won't work for everyone. Most corporations are not willing to respond to a complaint by using social med…

The real problem, though, is that one time when the company is in the wrong over a bug in the AI. Then you basically have a faulty AI, and by extension, the store, falsely accusing the customer of vandalism or some such thing. Not a good way to go.

Maybe this is different, but my experience with recent tech innovations in brick-and-mortar payment systems haven't been positive overall. More trouble than they're worth.

This could very well be different, but the minute the store starts valuing the AI over the customer, I think the store is in for some trouble public relations-wise.

Re: Amazon Go

#918

Post by vit05 »

rtkwe wrote: post #867
vit05 wrote: post #575

What I do not understand is: Why do they need to know that it was me who got something off the shelf? They need to know when something has left the shelf, so they can refuel, and they need to know when something leaves the store, so they can charge. But do they really need to know when you pull out an item and then give up buying it?

It's kind of the only way to do it without having an RFID tag on everything which would be expensive because they'd have to either special order the items from the manufacturer or apply them themselves both of which are costly. That's one of the major sticking points that has prevented this from showing up in normal grocery stores for years.

I read a bit more about, it seems that following the whole process, not just check in and check out, it becomes harder to steal an item.

"Because it works by watching actual items come off the shelves — instead of reading a tag or RFID chip, for example — you won’t be able to steal items by removing or altering tags."

Re: Amazon Go

#919

Post by ISNIT »

"No lines" I'm just imagining a huge group of people standing by the door waiting to download the app so they can buy eggs.

Re: Amazon Go

#920

Post by ISNIT »

"No lines" I'm just imagining a huge group of people standing by the door waiting to download the app so they can buy eggs.
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