Driverless Supermarkets

It’s been in planning, production and testing for the past 12 months…..and this week sees the first driverless supermarket go live.

Amazon Go has launched in Seattle with no checkouts at all and no human interaction needed to shop or pay for the groceries. It uses an array of ceiling-mounted cameras to identify each customer and track what items they select, eliminating the need for billing. Sensors on the shelves add items to the bill as customers pick them up and deletes any they put back. Purchases are then billed to a customer credit card when they leave the store.

Which all begs the question……is the driverless supermarket going to be a new reality in the years to come or is it simply Amazon serving up a shiny brand marketing campaign / gimmick?

 

Well, it has some legs that’s for sure. I guess it will all come down to profitability and how long the upfront investment in technology will take to ‘pay back’. When you consider that Tesco alone employs over 300,000 people, it is clear that a significant labour saving will be attractive to supermarkets that work on such low profit margins.

Which brings me to ponder a few points:

Technology in supermarkets. As we are seeing with electric cars, the rate of development and market penetration is far from quick. Let’s be frank, supermarkets seems far from quick to adopt technology and manage it successfully. Just get yourself along to any self-service checkout and watch as customers take it in turn to lose the plot with the “unexpected item in the bagging area”. It’s like a Monty Python sketch.  

 

What about customer identification? On a busy Saturday morning, I am pretty sure I am not the only dark haired (with subtle grey ‘areas’) tall man sighing his way around the isles ramming any screaming kid with his trolley. Just how reliable is the identification? I’d hate to think someone else was paying for my shopping.

 

Then there is the customer experience. If I am not being greeted with a miserable sigh / grunt at the deli counter, treated like I am the thickest man alive when my knowledge of where the piccalilli is located is inferior to staff members with 15 years experience under their belts, endure a 15 minute queue whilst Brenda at the checkout provides a running commentary on the items being purchased by the irritating lady in front, playing adult Tetris on the conveyor belt with my trolley load and having to repeatedly confirm that I do not need any bags or help with the packing, then it will lack the ‘supermarket experience’. A certain irritating and frustrating ‘je ne sais pas’ will be missing in all our lives.

 

Despite these ponderings, money talks. And if the technology is consistent and offers supermarkets significant long term labour savings, it could all become reality.

 

In a consumer driven economy, it will be interesting to see how this will all impact the UK economy.

 

Intriguing times.