Amazon has redefined convenience in every category they have entered (starting with their original business of shipping books). The company has raised customers’ expectations for speedy execution and has raised the bar for all of its competitors at the same time. Whether Amazon Go works or not is almost beside the point, because the company can afford to fail — but Amazon appears committed to bringing its vaunted tech-driven efficiency to brick-and-mortar retail models that haven’t advanced much beyond the UPC code. (If Amazon Go works … watch out!)

For the incredibly tech-aware it looks perfect as they understand everything quickly. The devil is in the details with more SKUs and payment options for wide-scale adoption. Clearly once retail innovators experience it they will bring elements to more retailers quicker, but I doubt publicly using Amazon’s branded technology.

This is what the future of convenience/self-serve retailing looks like. Transaction friction caused by long checkout lines or malfunctioning self-checkout technology is the bane of shoppers – Amazon Go has the potential to truly solve this problem. However, like all technology, there are concerns. Beyond the list of good questions listed I would add, how accurate is the technology? No data capture system is perfect, so understanding accuracy is important. Also, what does it cost to deploy and maintain this technology? And finally, how secure is it — can the system be hacked or subverted? While many questions will be raised, I believe the benefits to consumers of a system like this will far outweigh risks.

Amazon Go’s technology is brilliant PR. Reading the headlines, it has masked the far more substantive story — that Amazon is doubling down on physical retail. Clearly, Amazon is envisioning more of a physical store future than expected between Amazon Go and the bookstores I nicknamed “Barnes & Amazon” after visiting the one they opened near me.

The technology is certainly interesting. Time will tell whether it’s as big a deal as they want us to believe. I simply recommend a watch and wait approach on the technology — but pay attention to Amazon’s need for physical retail.

Not to be too grinchy here, but am I the only one who notices that Amazon makes provocative announcements during the holiday seasons (that ultimately never happen)? Great free PR. One year it was drones on 60 Minutes, one year the company took a storefront on 34th Street in Manhattan and did nothing with it after we all discussed it for weeks.

So I’m calling “baloney!” We’ve given too much free press to too many.

Retail is a consignment business! Amazon Go IS the future (the very near future) of brick-and-mortar retail. Full stop! The technology exists today to implement this workflow. I have been working with a technology and business process startup that has developed an in-store merchandising solution that enables a brand (and retailer) to conduct a consignment business with 100 percent accuracy and transparency.

In order for the physical store to remain relevant, the store needs to consistently and regularly feature new products that are being introduced by many new, small companies. The only way to make this feasible is to present these options to shoppers through a consignment arrangement. It’s good for both the retailer (real estate) and the brand (access to an audience). This approach also addresses all of the costs and challenges with inventory and supply chain management. Most retailers expect the brands to police this themselves anyway.

This is simply another extension of Amazon’s customer-serving/delivery options. At the end of the day, Amazon is a fine-tuned distribution company, constantly experimenting with new delivery methods. Amazon Go is the Uber equivalent for food retail shopping. Obviously, all food retailing channels need to take notice, including the c-store channel whose hold on convenience shopping is being challenged.

This made the news this morning and my wife reacted positively. “Positively” is an understatement. If this works, she is in. Her words, “I hate standing on the checkout line and I hate checking out. I have more important things to do.”

This is one of those technologies that if we can do it, why wouldn’t we? With the caveat of it being as accurate as a human checker, it is a “no-brainer.”

We did a checkout study and reviewed this exact scenario with over 1600 consumers across the U.S. and it ranked very high, especially among young people. However older customers, Boomers in particular, were not so keen on the idea.

So if you’re Target or Walmart, you better go slow in this neighborhood. But if you’re Apple or Urban Brands, test it now.

There are more than 150,000 convenience stores in the U.S. today. For Amazon stores to make any significant change in the c-store landscape would require a larger store format with a broader selection, an extremely sizable investment and a long time.

The largest impact on c-store or any retail Amazon (or someone else) can have is if they prove out the technology. This is dependent on many factors one of which is, how do you prevent shoplifting? I am sure the manufacturers of POS systems will watch this test very carefully.

All these questions are interesting but the most strategic and impactful of these is around speed: both around Amazon’s ability to ramp up the concept and for rivals’ ability to catch up. I view the Amazon Go concept as a logical and predictable extension of Amazon’s disruptive strategy. The company has consistently looked for ways to eliminate friction and non-value adding processes in retail, and from a consumer perspective the biggest bugaboo in grocery shopping is the checkout line — so off it goes. By investing in technology not only as a means to drive speed and efficiencies but to truly re-imagine and redefine the customer experience, Amazon dares to consider what others would be unwilling to consider or would be ridiculed for suggesting. For those reasons, I expect Amazon to go pedal-to-the-metal on ramping up the concept in a green field operation while legacy grocery operators work to introduce new ideas in existing brown field stores. Amazon is a risk-taking, market-share devouring technology company at its core with an obsessive focus on delivering differentiated… Read more »

I am not saying this as a prediction, I am saying this as a statement. This technology is a major game-changer and it is going to be a major disruption in a lot of industry besides those that hire a lot of hourly employees. How fast it is implemented will be determined by the cost compared to the labor savings and side benefits of inventory control and the reduction of theft.

Groceries, because of traffic, drove Walmart to the #1 global retailing business. Many things that Amazon does in bricks, other bricks retailers think, “Oh, we can do that — if we want to.” But aside from the fact that Amazon is increasingly the CLEAR LEADER in bricks retail (not volume, but concept, which will drive volume later,) Amazon is already NOW the driver of retail innovation.

Our merchant warehouseman bricks retailers would require brain transplants to even pretend to compete with the coming onslaught from Amazon. Amazon sells ITEMS to individual shoppers, while the merchant warehouseman makes CATEGORIES available to the unpaid stock-pickers (AKA shoppers).

Notice also that Amazon will deploy tablets on the shelves, extending the long tail of the store indefinitely, without adding footage/inventory to the store.

The last time we had a disaster/opportunity of this magnitude was 100 years ago, when the US went from a half-million stores to something like 50,000. Joseph Schumpeter described it as creative destruction. Sounds about right as a description of what is going on today.

Would be interesting to see the billing accuracy rate for the customer and also the amount of shrink. I am assuming the basket size is rather small, but it is a limited assortment store. I can’t tell if this is basically a food service only C-store, which would make sense since it isn’t something you would order online and delivered. We will need more information, especially on how well it handles high shrink items like pharma.

There are three questions that were stimulated by Amazon Go: 1) Will consumers find this appealing? ABSOLUTELY. As previously stated, waiting in line to have the items scanned or doing it yourself and bagging items seems very archaic. 2) How will the workforce be affected? Honestly, the minimum wage increase is more of a threat and it may permit new skills to be developed such as at-shelf execution, in-store sampling, etc. 3) Will others follow suit? Not immediately — until such a time the acceptance is proven and the accuracy of prices (and risk of pilferage) have been overcome. But, eventually, it makes all the sense in the world.

Hold onto your hat. Amazon Go is as profound as the first Wriggly gum scan. Let’s see, password protected personal bar code, item pick and scan (been doing this in warehouses for years, Stop & Shop as offered pick and scan for years) and scan your personal bar code on the way out or time out shopping to identify the end point. Link item RFID chip and you have security not being employed with shelf scan. Clean up a few areas and you have the Generation Y preferred shopping method. The only drawback is not everyone has a smart phone so they will not be target customers. If I were Mastercard or Visa, this is the service I would provide retailers. This creates the true digital wallet in a smart phone. The firm that provides a complete solution will win the transaction challenge among Mastercard, Visa, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Discover, American Express and PayPal. Retailers have pricing systems, so all they have to do is provide a link to the software which can be… Read more »

AmazonGo is aptly named — they’re helping shoppers “go” forward. Payment and the checkout process certainly have the most friction involved as far as most shoppers are concerned. Amazon has tackled this head-on with a maximum of automation and made mobile the customer-facing component. Unlike other mobile technologies searching for a problem to solve for shoppers (e.g. beacons) this is sure to be very well received. Even the less tech savvy need nothing more complex than downloading an app and launching it when they walk in the store. This is about as convenient as ordering products with Alexa via an Echo, but in-store. I don’t think there is any question consumers will flock to it. I expect we’ll see and hear much about this at NRF next month — and perhaps that is what Amazon’s real plan has been all along. They’ve succeeded at creating so much buzz we can’t help to talk about it. The real question will be (once the store opens) how accurate is this system and will they make money with… Read more »

AmazonGo is just the latest iteration of bringing Internet convenience (eshopping) to the C-store channel, but it doesn’t address the reason for C-stores … location! People want their Big Gulp or their cigarettes now, and it is the location which makes this a reality.

AmazonGo is nothing less than a game changer. Not because of the reduction of friction at the checkout. That is awesome and one of the reasons consumers will try it, sign in to the app (see Uber) and come back. It’s sort of a red herring. The game changing and far reaching implications are in this statement: “computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion.” This is not one functional technology, it is a combination working in concert to get Amazon what they want: more data on physical spending behavior. Information they don’t have about us. Think about the possibilities of physical stores being as aware as websites. That web-like data is enormously valuable and Amazon is far ahead of the game. Don’t fool yourself into thinking this is subject to the rules of retail as we know it and don’t think for a minute that this isn’t going to be rolled out. The logistics, margins and operational issues will all be worked out and when they strike on the the right combination of product,… Read more »