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Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I think you've pinpointed the re
by CydeWeys 4y ago
Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I think you've pinpointed the reason it failed, but I can't imagine why they thought it was going to succeed at those prices.
- imglorp 4y agoMaybe they were thinking about the immediate gratification cognitive bias. You might see the price on the shelf as you take each item from the shelf, but that doesn't translate to a total expense until you actually pay the Amazon bill at the end of the month.
- 13of40 4y agoI'm not sure it actually failed. These stores work by having AI track customer actions via camera, and over the last couple of years they've gotten a ton of data and domain knowledge from them. It isn't hard to imagine that's been leveraged in whatever's watching the cameras at Whole Foods.
- jarjoura 4y agoAlthough they've added self-checkout lanes to Whole Foods, human interaction is in its DNA and you pay for that premium. Amazon is only able to capture your order details if you use the app at checkout.
- WeylandYutani 4y agoWhat kind of human interaction do you get out of some bored 15 year old girl at the supermarket? For me it doesn't go beyond "hello" and "bye". Maybe it's something to do with culture. Anyway I looked up some data and over half the customers in my country use the self checkout now.
- CydeWeys 4y agoThe point of spending this massive amount of money on an automated store is to recoup that investment by opening lots of automated stores and make money in volume, taking advantage of your lower labor costs. If they don't actually open at least hundreds of these then they've thrown away massive amounts of money on R&D they'll never get back, and the data they did accumulate isn't even particularly useful as it's in the context of a type of store they're not running at scale.
- andrei_says_ 4y agoCheaper for Amazon, yes. Why would they externalize the profit? Just maximizing extraction by eliminating the few remaining local jobs.
- __derek__ 4y agoHow did it fail? They just announced that eight stores were permanently closed after having been closed indefinitely, one of which was inside of an Amazon office that shut down last year.[1] It looks like they still have 29 Go stores open nationwide.[2] [1]: https://www.geekwire.com/2023/amazon-closing-eight-amazon-go-convenience-stores-in-latest-tightening-of-its-physical-retail/ https://www.geekwire.com/2023/amazon-closing-eight-amazon-go... [2]: https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011 https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011
- sentientslug 4y agoJust because they're blowing money on it doesn't mean it's a successful concept
- asveikau 4y agoThis reminds me that the San Francisco ones, if I remember correctly, are in a part of town that's been famously devoid of foot traffic since the pandemic. San Francisco might be receptive to the concept, but it would have to be close to where people live, rather than where office workers used to go.
- jonathankoren 4y agoThe only one I know in SF was down in the FiDi, and I can’t imagine that area had much traffic during the pandemic, and I question how much it has now.
- asveikau 4y agoThat's precisely what i was saying.
- grogenaut 4y agoI'm also seeing this tech in some airports in basically a linear contained store. Walk in, walk down the tunnel grab what you want, walk out. Seemed very efficient and airport appropriate
- pas 4y agoIt could have been intentionally set to a more expensive price level, to manage the number of people using it. (To manage the "load" on the product development team, because if 2% of all users encounter some problems - or otherwise need support - then it's not scalable.)
- jedberg 4y ago> Isn't the whole point of Amazon generally, and these stores specifically in not having staff, that it's supposed to be cheaper? I'm pretty sure the goal is to have a higher profit margin than competitors by leveraging technology, not lower prices.
- emodendroket 4y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if that were the long-term goal but in reality it was not yet cheaper. Automation often proves more difficult than one would expect.
- oblio 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/1319/ https://xkcd.com/1319/ This should be branded on the forehead of every CEO of a company that promises full self driving capabilities for cars before 2030 and cryptocurrency mass adoption, also before 2030.
- mjevans 4y agoThe image caption text seems very fitting as well. Not quite the dictionary definition of auto-mation but maybe it should be.
- vhold 4y agoMy hunch is that the store wasn't meant to be particularly popular with lots of customers, it was meant to demonstrate technologies they wanted to sell to businesses. https://aws.amazon.com/just-walk-out/ https://aws.amazon.com/just-walk-out/ https://aws.amazon.com/one/ https://aws.amazon.com/one/
- desiarnezjr 4y agoThey've employed a "Amazon is the first and best customer" for most of the services they've launched. Amazon.com / AWS is an example.
- gumby 4y agoWas Amazon actually the first customer for AWS (being a very early customer counts)? I've heard that they were, but I've also heard that the AWS guys designed for a different customer base first. Like the eBay Pez story it makes sense and adds credibility for the narrative to be that Amazon was the first customer for AWS. But it feels like a very unamazon thing to do, given that so much of its customer base isn't running the kind of enterprise jobs that an Amazon scale company needs. (Either way I imagine almost all of Amazon does run on AWS these days and I'm sure the transition took a long time)
- bestnameever 4y agoThey also recently opened cashierless Whole Food locations that use the same technology. I would not be surprised if some of these Gp stores were never intended to stay open but rather existed as a concept and to test ideas.