Amazon, reportedly, will be opening its first cashierless grocery store in Seattle today. The store will have four times more shopping space compared to its first cashier-less store that the company opened two years back. The new store at Seattle's Capitol Hill definitely is a big leap for the e-commerce giant in the cashier-less store technology space.
Amazon has changed the entire retail ball game in the last few years by swinging towards online purchasing instead of visiting physical stores. Now, the e-commerce giant is once again unsettling the traditional brick-and-mortar retail giants by invading the space with a whole new technology that will help customers not only save time while shopping but also make the experience an entirely new affair.
Inside the store
The new Amazon Go Grocery will be one-of-its-kind store that opens to customers on Tuesday took five years in the making and is spread over approximately 10,400 square feet. The store is four times the size of the original 7-Eleven-style on-the-go stores that Amazon first opened in January 2018. The store will be selling around 5,000 stocked items and will be targeting residential neighborhoods, office workers, whom Amazon Go convenience stores so long have been serving.
Amazon Go Grocery works much like the Amazon Go convenience stores where customers enter the store by scanning their app. Ceiling cameras and sensors on the shelves track and record what the customers put in their cart. If a customer puts a product back on the shelf after looking at it, then Amazon removes the product back from the list in the cart. Customers are automatically charged on credit card that is on the file when before they exit the store.
Big leap for Amazon
Needless to say, this is a big leap for Amazon, which has been revolutionizing the retail ballgame over the past few years. Amazon, which started as an online bookstore, has over the years emerged as one of the biggest e-retailers and has changed the entire concept of shopping, with more people buying online than visiting physical stores.
This has seen an increasing number of brick-and-mortar giants focus more on e-commerce to stay in the race. However, Amazon, in 2017, took yet another bold step when it acquired Whole Foods and entered into the physical store retail space. The company took full advantage of technology and its strong delivery arm to woo customers by giving them a whole new experience of free one-day, followed by a free same-day delivery option.
Next, the company opened its first cashierless store Amazon Go in 2018, which once again gave a new dimension to the entire shopping experience. Go Grocery reflects Amazon ambitious plans of capturing the weekly spend of shoppers through groceries thus intensifying competition with the likes of Kroger, Walmart and Albertsons. Now, a lot depends on the success of Amazon Go Grocery, which could once again change the entire retail ball game.
