“Waiting in long checkout lines” is certainly one of the people’s least favorite parts of grocery shopping experience. It is still cited as the major reason people feel apprehensive about going to a store in spite of the advancements in automated technology to make the checkout experience easier and faster. With the introduction of Amazon Go, Amazon firmly believes it has solved this problem.
Amazon Go is a new type of store with no checkout needed. No pin machine, no chip and no lines. The customers can walk in, grab their products and can walk out simply. The grocery store opened on December 5th, 2016 in Seattle in a private beta testing mode. It is yet to open for the public and is in pilot phase currently.
As reported by Seattle Times, Amazon recently posted a job opening for a senior real estate manager for Amazon Go. This has raised the speculations that Amazon is expanding Amazon Go beyond its experimental phase.
As suggested by reports, Amazon Go functions flawlessly if the number of employees are less than 20 or when their movement is slow. However, there are few issues that Amazon is currently dealing with like slight kinks in the technology that is utilized to charge the customers automatically as they leave, and the problem regarding placing tabs on an item if it has taken out from its particular position on the shelf.
Amazon Go will deal with millions of transactions in a single day and this incorporates each individual customer’s personal data. This small glitch focuses on the need for a connectivity solution that is cloud-connected, secure and robust.
Also Read: The Missing Link in your Market Data: Know Your Customers Better
Mobile and distributed enterprises across various industries are embracing the cloud-connected technologies in order to gain operational insights, empower distributed workforces and enhance business agility.
Amazon Go is changing how we distribute as well as connect data. As a result, an increasing amount of enterprise network traffic is moving onto public internet from private IP networks.
For this enterprise era, the technologies are being developed and organizations are choosing private cloud networks over wireless and wired broadband internet services.
In Amazon Go store, the technology is extremely simple. It is aided by a complex system of sensor fusion, deep machine learning and computer vision that seamlessly functions to keep the communications running between free Amazon Go app, the smartphone of the customer and the physical store.
After the customers arrive to the store, they just scan their smartphone to enter and start shopping. Multiple sensors and digital images of the stock are utilized in order to find out which item is being chosen for purchase.
The system’s deep machine learning aspect kicks in if there is any confusion. It looks at prior purchases to make sure which item it is most likely to be. Then, this data is registered with the Amazon account of the customer and upon leaving the store, a receipt is sent to their smartphone directly.
In order to create a retail experience, the AI (Artificial Intelligence) system comes together with the control of walking into a traditional brick-and-mortar store and with the convenience of online shopping.
Related Read: Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Shopping and Customer Experience
In order to save time for the customers that they usually spend waiting in line, the items are billed in real time to the online Amazon account of the customer, by walking out of the store. Few surveys suggest that an average consumer from UK spends almost 18 days a year in shops.
Considering this, Amazon Go saves a lot of time and combines traditional retail experience with the convenience of online shopping. This could mean reduction in time taken to do the weekly shopping.
This “digital first” merge is an exciting one and in the future, IoT applications like this have the potential to transform how we connect and communicate with each other fundamentally.
With the opening of this store, this norm is beginning to shift in the retail sector and this will be followed by many other sectors. Check out the Amazon Go video here.
(Disclaimer: This is a guest post submitted on Techstory by the mentioned authors. All the contents and images in the article have been provided to Techstory by the authors of the article. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any content in this article.)
Image Source: Fortune
About The Author:
Savaram Ravindra was born and raised in Hyderabad, popularly known as the ‘City of Pearls’. He is presently working as a Content Contributor at Tekslate.com and Mindmajix.com.
His previous professional experience includes Programmer Analyst at Cognizant Technology Solutions. He holds a Masters degree in Nanotechnology from VIT University. He enjoys spending time with his friends. He can be contacted at savaramravindra4@gmail.com. Connect with him also on LinkedIn and Twitter.
