The future of the grocery store: Amazon Go?

Earlier this month Amazon introduced its new grocery store concept Amazon Go. Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required.

Amazon created the world’s most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. The store is pitched as a 'Just Walk Out Shopping experience'.

Simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout.

The best way to understand how this new grocery store concept will work is to watch the Amazon Go introduction video below.
 

Amazon Go is said to be one of at least three brick-and-mortar formats the company will be testing shortly. Amazon is planning to operate a 20-location pilot program for its grocery stores by the end of 2018, in places like Seattle, Las Vegas, New York, Miami, and the Bay Area.

The company wants to experiment with different versions of stores during the pilot program. Ten of the grocery stores will be "click-and-collect" drive-up spots for Amazon customers to pick up their online orders. The other 10 will be traditional stores where cart-pushing shoppers can stroll the aisles while touching, smelling, and inspecting produce and other goods for themselves.

In the next ten years Amazon sees room for 2000 of its brick-and-mortar stores.

Not everyone is thrilled with the prospect of the Amazon Go format. In the reviews section below we have collected a few opinion pieces (Effect on jobs? Effect on restaurant operators? How easy is it for others to do the same? Spoiler: it is hard) as well as well as additional background (e.g. patent by Amazon).

Either way, retail innovation is going into overdrive...