An interesting set of stories came out over the past week, which showed how two retail giants are leveraging technology to help consumers get out of the store faster.
One one hand, you have Amazon halving its Go store count to 16 locations, shifting focus to licensing its “Just Walk Out” technology to third-party retailers.
On the flip side, Walmart’s bulk membership club Sam’s Club is investing more heavily to use computer vision to aid shoppers to get out of the store faster.
The key difference? Sam’s Club is using computer vision for receipt verification. Previously, members had to stop at the exit while associates manually checked receipts, causing bottlenecks. Now, cameras at the exit automatically scan carts and verify purchases, allowing members to walk out without interruption. AI works in the background to refine accuracy, while employees are freed up to assist shoppers rather than policing receipts.
Contrast this with Just Walk Out, which is Amazon’s effort to eliminate the checkout experience all together which, it appears for many people, is still too weird and feels a little to close to shoplifting.
As I wrote last year, Just Walk Out is “a radically tech-forward evolution of checkout, but one in which Amazon appears to have widely overestimated just how many people would use it and how easy it would be to implement. Self-checkout fits most shoppers’ needs when they are in a hurry, and there aren’t that many situations where consumers feel they need to skip checkout altogether.”
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