Amazon Logo - © 2016 Amazon

Amazon Supermarket: ‘Just Walk Out’

Amazon has launched a new concept in grocery marketing which is cashless, even check-outless and leverages technology to the max. I know you’ve probably heard about this already, but I needed a few days to digest the implications and form a well-considered opinion on the concept…

Amazon Go - © 2016 AmazonAmazonGo retailing: Just walk out…

According to Supermarket News, Amazon is testing a new automated retailing system, called AmazonGo, which could roll out to more than 2,000 North American supermarket locations within a decade. I’m intrigued about Amazon’s new supermarket model but, at the same time, I’m leery of it, for a number of reasons.

Here’s how it works…

You go into the store with your smart phone on and navigate the aisles as usual, filling your cart as usual. But you use your phone to get information about the products – via Bluetooth link, we assume, since not all phone users have a data plan and many who do would doubtless prefer not to use their precious data allowance on something as mundane as grocery shopping. On the way out of the store, you simply pass through a gate where your purchases are scanned and totaled and charged up against your Amazon account. Oh, yes! You have to have an Amazon account to use the store. No options.

What spooks me…

First, there’s that Amazon account that records everything I buy, when  I buy it and how often I buy it. I wouldn’t mind so much Amazon having that information as part of an anonymous pool of data, but I definitely don’t want the marketing monster to have it keyed to my personal identity. I don’t want Amazon to come back at me after a few visits to the supermarket offering me specials and sales on stuff it thinks I want. I don’t want Amazon selling my personal information to other entities which don’t compete with it. And don’t think they wouldn’t. It’s an easy, lucrative revenue source – the same way outfits like the phone company sell your address and phone number to phone and mail marketing services. And don’t think they don’t!

Next, I don’t like the human-nature consequences of the system, A generation or two down the road, folks might be used to the Amazon system, even take it and other such cashless, humanless systems for granted. But, for the foreseeable future and certainly for the rest of my time on this Earth, there will be a danger that people will get over-charged by errors in the system, or charged twice (or more) for the same item due to scanning errors. And what do you do if you detect an error? Are there humans on site, at all? Would they have the authority to correct the errors? Or would you have to spend hours on the Amazon website going through an online – also humanless – appeals process?

Finally, I think there’s a real danger that people will buy some things without checking the price, just because they look so good and the shoppers assume they’ll be ‘about (a certain price)’. I wouldn’t want to find later, after I got home, that the piece of Cheese I threw into my cart in a rush was actually imported Parmigiano Reggiano and cost me $33 instead of $13 I’d gladly and usually  spend for the domestic equivalent. I know old folks like you and I would never fail to check the price at the store. But younger folks, with a more-entitled view of the world, might make such regrettable assumptions. Then, they’re into the appeals process, again…

On a tangent to the foregoing, I fear that Amazon and other outfits that use similar retailing models will set off a major wave of impulse buying. The more one is disconnected from the price and  parameters of a product, the more likely it is that they’ll make choices they’ll regret later.

And, Mom…

Don’t take the kids to the store anymore. Think of all the stuff they’ll toss into your card when you’re not looking! It wouldn’t take long for them to boost your checkout total by $25 to $50 and, unless you’re a savvy shopper who keeps track of your purchases, you might not realize what’s happened until you get home – or hours or even days later…

~ Maggie J.