![]() However, identifying and counting items still relies on human staff. The contactless payment system, such as Apple Pay, is the closest solution allowing customers to shop cashless. Customers don’t have to carry their wallets. I personally find it useful for a faster process, though, it receives more criticism, mainly because customers are not trained to use registers (some poll from 2014 suggested that 93% of people disliked them). The closest precedent may be the self-checkout system in some large-scale supermarkets or drugstores. Image source: Amazon Go, a high-tech version of a 7-Eleven, will finally open on Monday - with no checkout lines and no cashiers | recode What does Amazon Go try to solve? Customers save time by NOT waiting in a cashier line. In 1972, Kroger agreed to test the barcode system to manage inventories better, soon creating the industry standard, Universal Product Code (UPC). In the meantime, physical stores adopted various technologies to run a centralized register even more efficiently with less human staff. This then led to e-commerce giants like Amazon in later days. In the 1930s, the Great Depression had pressured more supermarkets into the same direction and to pursue economies of scale, which ultimately lead to the success of Walmart. This system didn’t only help operation costs, but it also stimulated customers to buy more by spending time picking up different items. The customers were led to the store’s storage to pick up items themselves, and then to the centralized register area to pay all items together. In 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly store in Memphis completely changed this flow. Customers needed to visit individual stores that sold different goods. One’s grocery shopping experience from markets in the 1800s was simply inefficient. However, one of Amazon Go’s main agendas is to reduce the operating cost, human staff. Presumably, Amazon Go can help customers save time in its target market, which include dense downtown settings, where register lines get long during peak hours. Unlike Tesco’s case, in the case of Amazon GO, customers still need to go to physical stores. Source: Tesco Homeplus Virtual Subway Store in South Korea
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