After more than a year of testing, Amazon.com Inc has officially opened its first grocery store that has no sales people, no cash registers and no checkout lines. Amazon Go operates in high-tech sensors and cameras to scan what shoppers' are buying. This revolutionary system of shopping may take off this year as more companies are expected to follow suit.
Amazon pioneers the checkout-free grocery store thought to be the future of shopping industry. On Monday, the first Amazon Go shop opened in Seattle in a bid to change the way brick-and-mortar retail operates.
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Amazon Go heavily depends on cameras and sensors to keep tabs on what shoppers take off from the shelves. No cashiers and checkout lines are waiting at the door; customers will be billed automatically once they leave the store. Shoppers will be registered to Amazon.com where their credit cards are on file.
This novel way of shopping cuts back on the amount of time spent in the long lines at traditional stores. It could potentially be a game-changing system to topple down e-commerce as well and bring shoppers back to physical stores.
Amazon did not mention any expansion plans, particularly on the establishment of more checkout-free grocery stores. The concept store of Amazon Go first opened to Jeff Bezos' employees on December 5, 2016, for testing.
The e-commerce giant went through some hiccups with the technology, including the incorrect identification of shoppers with the same body types, causing confusion in the movements of the items to wrong places, reports Reuters. Gianna Puerini, vice president of Amazon Go, told the publication in an interview that everything worked accordingly.