Amazon’s Just Walk Out Revolution: Why the U.S. Amazon Stores Have Not Come to Folly Like Where They Used To Be
The company’s technology makes it easier for customers to pay for items while they are standing in line. Amazon says it will now be replaced by smart carts that allow customers to skip the checkout line but also see their spending in real time.
Seattle-based Amazon operates dozens of Fresh grocery stores across the country, most of which are in California, Illinois, Virginia and Washington state. The company owns Whole Foods, which it purchased for $13.7 billion, and operates cashier-free convenience stores under the Amazon Go brand.
In 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his annual letter to shareholders that Amazon was working to find the right formula that will allow it to have a larger impact on physical grocery. Amazon paused its expansion into Fresh stores early last year due to the fact that some of them weren’t living up to their promise.
In November, the company reopened three Fresh stores in Los Angeles, California. Golden, the Amazon spokesperson, said the company is now focused on “selectively” opening new Fresh stores and remodeling the majority of its existing stores.
Now, it’s taking this tech out of its Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S. (It’s staying in the UK.) Many experts wondered what had taken so long, the experiment failed to spread widely. The “just walk out” revolution did not come to Amazon’s own Whole Foods, let alone the industry.
Amazon’s “Just Walk Out”: Just Walk Out is In The Pantheon of Smart Card-Based Grocery Self-Checkout
It’s also expensive and complex. Outfitting every nook and cranny of a large store with smart computer vision proved unreasonable. And it still required some human involvement, with people behind the scenes helping machines learn to interpret video and clarify uncertainties.
“The accuracy expectations from the consumer on this are unbelievably high,” Hariharan says. “Is it 100% accurate, 100% of the time? If it’s not, then it starts to lead to consumer trust issues.”
Amazon has rolled out the Dash Carts to a handful of Whole Foods stores, but has not said when or whether they’d become ubiquitous. The high-tech carts would face competition from several smaller companies offering smart carts.
All this, of course, depends on shoppers’ learning curve with new technology, says Uttara Ananthakrishnan, who teaches about the digital transformation of the grocery industry at Carnegie Mellon University.
Retailers have been rethinking their approach to self-check out because it’s prone to theft and mistakes. Ananthakrishnan says grocery stores are a particularly hard place to introduce new tech.
There is so much variety in the products. Not everything has a code. A lot of things need to be weighed,” she says. “And then you kind of place the onus on the customers, and a lot of people don’t like that.”
The marvel did not draw crowds. Shoppers said they felt weary walking through entry gates as cameras and sensors watched them. Amazon says people also wanted to see the running tally of prices and discounts as they shopped — not later, after leaving.
“Amazon’s success is built on failures, however, we don’t forget that this is a failure; however, let’s not forget that it is,” Hariharan said. That part is ironic.
That’s a big admission of defeat, though certainly the company does not accept that term. The technology will still live on in Amazon Go convenience stores as well as dozens of smaller shops.
As far as Amazon’s gee-whiz technology goes, “Just Walk Out” is in the pantheon: Early shoppers marveled at the concept of grabbing stuff off grocery shelves and simply leaving, tracked by cameras that calculate the eventual receipt.
