Amazon unveils the Amazon Go checkout-free store

Background

Grocery sales are a large and important part of American retail. When Amazon made its announcement, CBS News noted that the concept challenges retailers such as Walmart, Target and Kroger, which depend heavily on grocery sales.^[1]

The announcement

On 5 December 2016, Amazon unveiled a prototype brick-and-mortar food store called Amazon Go.^[1] The store was about 1,800 square feet and was being tested at a location in Seattle, Amazon's home city. At first it was open only to employees, and Amazon said it would open the store to the public the following year.^[1]

How the store works

The experience is built on what Amazon calls "Just Walk Out" technology, which the company said it had developed over the previous four years.^[1] A shopper uses the Amazon Go app to enter, takes what they want and leaves. Their Amazon account is charged automatically, and a receipt is emailed to them.^[1] The system automatically detects which products are taken from or returned to shelves, and tracks them in a virtual cart.^[1] According to Amazon's own site, the checkout-free experience rests on the same kinds of technology used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning.^[2]

Those three terms describe different jobs. Computer vision is about getting a machine to recognise objects and events from images. Sensor fusion means combining signals from several sensors so that the combined picture is more reliable than any single sensor on its own. Deep learning is a way of training models on large amounts of data so that they can make those recognitions and predictions. Put together in a shop, the aim is for the building itself to keep track of what each person has picked up, so that no cashier and no checkout lane are needed.

What Amazon would and would not say

Amazon declined to give further details of its plans or make executives available for interviews.^[1] The public description of the store therefore rested mainly on the company's own account of the technology and on the demonstration it chose to show.

Why it drew attention

What made the announcement notable was the combination: a company known for selling online was opening a physical food shop, and the shop's main feature was the removal of the checkout. Grocery is a business where the last few metres before the door — the till, the queue, the bagging — take time and staff, and where large chains have long competed on price and convenience. CBS News framed the store as Amazon's newest disruption in shopping and pointed to the pressure it puts on established grocers such as Walmart, Target and Kroger, whose businesses depend heavily on food sales.^[1] At the time of the announcement the store was still a prototype open only to employees, with a public opening promised for the following year.^[1]