Greg's Corner

Amazon to unveil store without cashiers

Recently, online retail monolith Amazon announced that they were opening a new brick and mortar store that would have no cashiers or check out lines. The store, called Amazon Go, touts itself as a high-tech store that uses several different technologies in order to determine what you’ve purchased and how to charge your Amazon account for it.

Amazon’s announcement made quite a splash in the recent news cycle, but with all the articles that have been written about it there’s one problem that has yet to be addressed, theft, or as they call it in the retail space, shrinkage. When someone develops a new and innovative system of commerce at anytime there are always going to be people looking to beat the system. Amazon Go sounds like it relies heavily on the honor system but as the saying goes there is no honor among thieves.

With this new proposed concept by Amazon, cashiers may be seen as the proverbial buggy whip manufacturers, however they do serve a purpose beyond just checking and bagging our groceries. Just by their presence they act as a line of defense to discourage many people from just walking out of the store with a cart full of groceries that they didn’t pay for.

Maybe Amazon has already addressed this issue internally, but by not discussing it publicly it seems that they are almost daring a battalion of five-finger discount practitioners to make Amazon Go a target.