Reviewers like the low (but not quite gone) employee interaction. Most comment on the novelty of stuffing things into your backpack and walking out. They all look at the grid of cameras suspended over the store and try and figure out what is actually going on (Amazon is not saying). All of this is great.
Then they start talking about the implications. As I don't live anywhere near Seattle, that's where I can jump in.
First, here are a few of the videos and articles that I'll be referencing (beyond Great Gatsby picture references), all in one nice bulletted list:
- CNET Article - Focuses more on the store experience
- Engadget Article - Another overview, but adds some stuff on the financial divide.
- Linus Tech Tips Video - More on how the shopping experience works and some of the weirder parts of it.
- New York Times Article - Pretty straight forward reporting with little color.
- CNBC Article and Video - The reporter managed to steal without meaning to.
With those out of the way, let's get into what this might mean for retail and society (oh, let's!).
Inventory Shrinkage
Most of the various reporters and bloggers tried to break the system in one way or another. Most were not successful. Those few that did manage to get a product out the store and not pay for it were told not to worry about it. Amazon seems complacent about this 'shrinkage', a subject that most retailers spend a lot of time stressing over.
My guess is that they have determined that they will lose no more than other, more traditional retailers and maybe less due to some of the requirements of shopping there: owning a smartphone and linking a checking account. Not to say that thieves don't have these things, but that they are unlikely to share them with a business that they are trying to rip off. It is easy for Amazon to take a 'fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you' attitude when they know everything about you.
Employment Shrinkage
But what about Amazon stealing from the public? Here, I'm talking about jobs. There are something like 3.5 million cashiering jobs in the US. Will this kill those jobs? Amazon says that it will not. That they still employ as many people as a similarly sized store: stocking shelves, helping people new to the experience, checking IDs in the alcohol area. And that may be during this initial 'early adopter' novelty period. But as the buzz dies down and a lower level of traffic flows through the store? I suspect that they will need fewer people.
Amazon is also saying that they have no plans to roll this out to Whole Foods. Most of the reporters put this into their articles, but all of them seemed to imply that they believe that will change over time. Or maybe Amazon will sell this technology to other retailers, similar to their Amazon Web Services, the most profitable arm of the Amazon empire. Either way, Whole Foods or selling the tech, it is not going to stay in one store on the Amazon campus. And then 3.5 million jobs will be automated out of the economy.
Digital Divide Expansion
As a part of my 'Post Work' agenda, this is great! After all, cashier jobs are not aspirational work: no one grows up dreaming of being a cashier. I have a lot of respect for the people who stand there all shift, expertly swiping products over bar code readers and entering a memorized list of produce codes. But that respect comes from the same place as my admiration for the survivors of the Bataan Death March: how do they survive it? It is not a job that I would want my Middle School Daughter to have for more than a year.
The challenge is that these are the kinds of jobs that the people who hold them really NEED. The stereotype has them as lower level, front line employees who have little training in a more profitable field. After all, if they have more marketable skills, why are they cashiering? These types of jobs put food on the table and roofs over heads for people who have few other options.
Beyond the shrinking job side of it, there is also the requirements to shop at Amazon Go: a smartphone (with the Amazon Go app installed) and a linked checking account. For most adults in the US this is not a challenge. According to the Engadget video, 77% of us have the phone, but those that don't are the ones that NEED those jobs. And the groups that are denied checking accounts are more often African American and Latino. I know that this segregation is a consequence of Amazon's financial due diligence and not intentional, but it is still worrying.
Expansive Solutions
If we (and by that I mean me) tackle these issues head on, then there are a couple of obvious solutions. First is for Amazon to re-introduce their Fire smartphone. This is a phone made more affordable through baked in advertising. Couple that with an similarly subsidized service plan and smartphones are made more accessible to a wider range of people. Heck, it might make sense to give them away if it means that they shop at Amazon Go exclusively (though watch out for the whole 'Company Store' gouging thing).
Secondly, Amazon might consider getting into the credit business more fully. Instead of just a Prime Card, they could become a full bank in their own right and offer checking accounts and such. They could even use their own machine learning algorithms to determine a person's credit worthiness rather than the arcane system that Equifax and others use.
But neither of those really tackle the issue of the jobs and the people who NEED them. That falls on institutions with more of a public mandate than the beholden-to-our-shareholders Amazon. Namely the government. Welfare needs to be expanded to those that lose their profession to automation. Taxes need to be expanded on corporations that automate jobs out of existence to pay for it.
Ultimately, I see Amazon Go as a step in the right direction. It will cause pain, but it is the kind of pain that might lead to action that tries to manage our transition to Post-Work instead of just letting it happen.
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