I never have to wait in line a long time anyways. Its not about waiting in line...its the shopping experience and knowing I can get fresh, locally farmed products. There's more to a grocery store than the checkout process which isn't bad at all IMO.
After I get what I need I certainly don't need an overpaid and unconcerned bagger restuffing my goods haphazardly in a bag. I just want to get the heck out of the store. Amazon has the right idea here.
Go through self-checkout then. The only thing Amazon may end up doing is putting good places out of business.
Self-checkout is also unnecessary under Amazon's implementation. You're "checking out" every time you take an item. This is a huge advance to such a mundane process. Also, keep in mind this is a small store. Probably smaller than a 7-11. So, the number of items per sale won't be anything like what the average trip to a grocery store is like.
Great points!
And those small scale stores also eliminate the use of shopping carts, so no need for people to corral them multiple times per day.
I could easily see this eating away at the most commonly purchased items sold by large grocery stores, or some very strong competition for 7-11 stores, but it's too early to declare big grocery store chains obsolete. It'll get there because Amazon and other stores will continue to make possible shopping by phone through services like Amazon Fresh, home delivery from Amazon and others and even eventually larger scale facilities where the costly employees are replaced by artificial intelligence and automation/robotics.
Since their system can't sell by the pound, will single folks have to buy more of a fresh item than they can consume before spoiling?
Will their system be able to cope with: hurried shoppers re-shelving items in the wrong place without billing for them; children scooping things of the shelves unnoticed by parents; items accidentally damaged when knocked off a shelf by a wayward shoulder-bag?
There will be plenty more challenges for this tech before it goes mainstream. Grocery shopping isn't necessarily as neat and tidy as depicted.
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I could easily see this eating away at the most commonly purchased items sold by large grocery stores, or some very strong competition for 7-11 stores, but it's too early to declare big grocery store chains obsolete. It'll get there because Amazon and other stores will continue to make possible shopping by phone through services like Amazon Fresh, home delivery from Amazon and others and even eventually larger scale facilities where the costly employees are replaced by artificial intelligence and automation/robotics.
Will their system be able to cope with: hurried shoppers re-shelving items in the wrong place without billing for them; children scooping things of the shelves unnoticed by parents; items accidentally damaged when knocked off a shelf by a wayward shoulder-bag?
There will be plenty more challenges for this tech before it goes mainstream. Grocery shopping isn't necessarily as neat and tidy as depicted.