Amazon Go Website showing the list of someone’s groceries and how easy it is to scan items

Would you ever find yourself in a situation where checking items out wouldn’t be required? Forbes’ blog post explores Amazon’s newly introduced Amazon Go application, that aims to improve the grocery shopping experience using the tag line “No lines, no checkout”. Instead of the typical grocery store, they use a digital shopping cart, allowing shoppers to walk in and out of the grocery without waiting in a checkout line.

When I read the Forbes post, I asked myself, how is this even possible? How can a business execute such a strategy that requires such advance technology? The list of questions that circulated around my head were endless.

It is not only Amazon Go that has amazed me, but many of their other innovations like Amazon Prime Air have also caught my attention. Having my own Amazon account and being in charge of family groceries, I can imagine the experience of walking out the doors without having to wait in a 20-minute line, or having to schedule when I should go to avoid peak hours. However, one major concern comes to mind: what happens to employees?

Since Amazon bought Wholefoods in August, it is expected that the customer experience is going to become identical to Amazon Go. With that being said, could this jeopardize Wholefood’s 91,000 employees?

In an everyday grocery store, employees are highly valued. They make the lives of the customers easier by guiding shoppers to where they need to be and by scanning and bagging all the goods purchased. Recently however, the evolution of advanced technology has made this case less true. From the implementation of self-service checkout to now having no checkout at all. It is unfortunate to believe that the likeliness of redundancy of thousands is bound to happen. At the end of the day, all businesses desire to have is profit, and the use of technology that makes the customer experience faster and simpler is usually the optimal solution.

Why is this useful for not just me, but for us? Put yourself in my shoes: a university student who usually has barely anything in her refrigerator and really has to get lunch before her 1:00pm class. Having a grocery store like Amazon Go would be the ideal option. All you have to do is grab what you need and go, it’s that simple. In short, it could be, as Forbes says, “The Internet of Food”

Overall, the growth of Amazon over the last decade has truly amazed me. From buying a simple necessity on the Internet, to being able to have deliveries through drones, and no-checkout grocery stores. And all they hope to achieve are more Amazon users and more opportunity to benefit their customers.

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Works Cited

Say, M. (2017, January 20). Amazon Go Is About Payments, Not Grocery. Retrieved October 28, 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2017/01/20/amazon-go-is-about-payments-not-grocery/#38c849a467e4