Amazon Go: Revolution or Ridiculous?
As technology continues its rapid expansion from the sky in the form of drones, to web-searching smartphones in the palm of our hands, the question ever looming this innovative field is often what’s next and who will make it. Amazon has been one of the companies who has built their entire reputation online/through technology, alongside brands like Google are the premier examples of 21st century business at its finest. And now, at least according to Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff and multitude of others, Amazon is getting ready to change the world again with Amazon Go. Amazon Go is essentially designed replace the grocery store, in particular the human interactions, through the use of the Amazon Go smartphone app, simplifying shopping to a grab, check-out, and leave. In addition to this Amazon is planning on bringing physical Amazon stores to aid not only this prospect, but their online delivery ones too. This all sounds great in theory and I can understand the intrigue and excitement, but this almost feels like a giant lab experiment, one fueled by online data and consumerism, basically bringing to life the things people complain about when using the internet.Let me be clear, I understand the loss of human communication in the traditional format has made the direct, in flesh is old fashioned, but despite Amazon’s ambitions you can’t replace the entire system for something as vital as grocery shopping with machines and computers. As someone’s who has worked in a grocery store and now shops mostly for themselves, I can tell you firsthand that humans are far more effective at stocking shelves and enhancing a shopper effectiveness, just as much if not more so than a list. Furthermore, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say automatic check-outs are only as convenient as the amount of items you have, which isn’t even mentioning how fallible these machines can be, or how the lines to use them is just as long as manually operated registers and if not I can honestly say I have never really seen or felt a time difference. Moving away from my more subjective complaints, I have questions about just how necessary/useful this product is an age when you can make a list on your smartphone that serves a similar purpose. I understand the idea is to avoid having to go to multiple stores to look for a carton of eggs, but other than something like that I question Amazon Go’s necessity. It also feels like, especially from Lance’s perspective that cutting grocery store jobs would be a great thing because the convenience of Amazon Go, and while that may be convenient for customer overall, I fail to see how this benefits grocery chains at all. However, in the end, this is all just speculation, as not only has the Amazon Go program not even been launched, but physical Amazon stores have yet to come into existence and when those do I think we will be able to truly analyze the impact Amazon has on this market. As it stands right now, Amazon Go is an impressive concept that feels like a novelty when compared to Amazon’s stable of existing products.
First off, I love the photo. That’s hilarious. And also quite true.
I think it’s interesting that you bring up the fact that buying things online, especially groceries, can replace a lot of human interactions in daily life. That seems very strange, and I don’t believe that’s the best thing. Regardless, Amazon Go offers the luxury of easier shopping.
I would definitely say this is a revolutionary product, but it’s revolutionary in some good ways and some bad ways.
I couldn’t agree more with your opinions, when I heard about this new grocery store idea I found it to be ridiculous. Not only will it limit the human interaction people are having, but if this idea took off it would take away a lot of jobs. Another note is that while I work at a grocery store, I see a lot of people who try to use self-checkouts. Now, I am not sure how the checkout procedure would work at Amazon Go, I can tell you that too many people already aren’t capable of checking out their groceries by themselves!
I didn’t believe this when I saw it first but I think it is crazy. It may be convenient but I really just don’t think that it’s worth it. Does it really save that much money to replace a few workers? There will be problems with this system and I guess the only way to figure those out is to test them out. I do agree with it kind of all feeling like a giant lab experiment.