So, today, Amazon opened their first pilot Go store to the public in Seattle, USA. The concept is really simple – walk in, take what you need, walk out: not lines, no check out.
Wow. This is obviously the future of retail.
I, an inveterate NON-SHOPPER, have often dumped my stuff and walked out of a store as a result of no or poor service, or long queues. There was also that time in a Manchester shop where I began throwing sheets sets onto the ground to try to get the attention of the staff. But we don’t talk about that event in public. (I got their attention pretty quickly, in case you’re wondering) Don’t judge, you had to be there. So I see the crazy merit in this frictionless experience. Kinda like the frictionless experience that means I have way too many physical books in my library (I know because I’m moving) and over 1000 Kindle books sitting in my Amazon account: 1-click many, many times. But A Thousand Click doesn’t quite equate to the same user experience. So, in the Amazon-Go store you don’t even need to click. Watch this footage of the concept to see what I mean.
In the age of the scan-your-own supermarket, I am not convinced that we will only want to shop like this though.
I may not like shopping but I do like cooking that the former precedes the latter. As a result, I spend a lot of time in supermarkets and markets. Sometimes I want a human interaction. A lot of the time, I don’t so i go through self-scan. But I like the option. When I have a question, or want to collect the stickers, or just feel like some human encounter, I go through the check out. I am of the opinion we will continue to want the human touch.
At my local supermarket, there’s a particularly jolly assistant at the self-scan checkout who almost always gives me more loyalty stickers than my shopping warrants. The unpredictability of her generosity is appealing. I suspect we, as social beings, will continue to appreciate the human touch. But only as an option. For sure, the future of retail opened its first pilot store today in Seattle.