Amazon Go, the new shopping frontier

After a year in beta, Amazon opens its first fully-automated, bricks-and-mortar shop. All you need is an app.

For people who, like me, grew up with Jules Verne and Star Trek, the future was all flying cars and walking on the moon. Well, we’ve been to the moon, and somebody is working on the flying cars

​I never imagined computer could be less bulky than an Olivetti 32, or that I could phone, send messages and take photos, all with a single device small enough to hold in your hand. And yet, here we are. Technology has improved our lives in many ways, each time with the stated aim of affording us more leisure and improving our quality of life.

Technology has improved our lives in many ways, each time with the stated aim of affording us more leisure and improving our quality of life.

​The process continues. How about those long, boring supermarket checkout queues? We’ve all been there – stuck behind the customer with a whole month’s groceries to pay for when all we’ve got is a newspaper and a packet of sandwiches. Making sure you’ve got the exact change ready just to save time when at last it’s your turn.

​Amazon has the solution. The online retail giant has just opened its first bricks-and-mortar retail outlet, Amazon Go. 

​It’s fully automated. There’s no queueing at the checkouts because there are no checkouts, therefore no queueing. No time is wasted; it’s a walk-in, grab-what-you-want-and-walk-out system. But seeing the crowds lined up outside Amazon’s first, newly-opened outlet in Seattle, I couldn’t help wondering why these people were queueing to get in just to avoid queueing to get out.

Amazon Go - queueing to get in just to avoid queuing to get out

​You need a smartphone pre-loaded with a specific app to shop at Amazon Go. Every item you take off the shelf is charged on your card. If you change your mind about something you’ve chosen, you just put it back on the shelf, push a button and the purchase is deleted. You must remember to put the item back on the right shelf or the system will have a problem, as they discovered when children started displacing things

Amazon Go - all you need is an App (Elaine Thompson AP )

​At Amazon Go you’ll find ready meals in super-glamorous packaging, chips, cupcakes, sandwiches, frozen food, pre-prepared dishes, macaroni and cheese and unavoidable feelings of superiority. There’s even fresh vegetables, to suit the modern, health-conscious lifestyle.

Amazon Go sells prepared foods and other grocery staples

​I have nothing against innovation. We humans are inquisitive creatures. The new Go shop is just a short walk from Amazon’s Seattle headquarters and most of the customers are people with a great deal of technological know-how. They’re not bothered about how the large numbers of surveillance cameras, scanners and infrared sensors used by the system might handle theft, intentional or not.

Shopping at Amazon Go. (Elaine Thompson AP)

​This isn’t the first attempt to technologize the shopping experience. Start-ups like Bodega, which compresses a whole shop into a vending machine, also offer the opportunity to shop with a smartphone app.

​I wonder if the people behind this idea that an app is the key to a better shopping experience are missing something from their lives? I agree that shopping online is more relaxing – you can do it from the comfort of your bedroom while snuggled up in your jammies - but as any good entrepreneur knows, the strength of a business lies in building good relationships with your clients. It’s all about the interface where human beings interact with each other to solve a problem. Having to go through an endless phone call, following instructions handed down by recorded voices in the hope of being put in touch with a ‘real’ person leaves us fuming.

Following instructions handed down by recorded voices in the hope of being put in touch with a ‘real’ person leaves us fuming.

​Strange though it may seem, shopping is based on human interaction. Queueing at the checkout gives us a few moments to realise that we’re not alone, that we’re all part of this game we call life. And if the old lady in front of us with a month’s worth of cat food is holding up the queue, be patient – you won’t be young forever!  

If the old lady in front of you with a month’s worth of cat food is holding up the queue, be patient

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