When Amazon last year introduced the world to its vision for grocery stores with Amazon Go, the mainstream media did its best to outdo each other to predict the retail apocalypse with the rise of the machines.
The New York Post went as far as saying Amazon’s plan was the “end of jobs” as we know it. The tabloid even used superimposed Amazon’s logo on the image of a robot from a cheesy sci-fi film to illustrate the point.
While Amazon Go did bring up questions about automation and the future of retail, the concept is still confined to a single location in Seattle almost nine months after it was first introduced.
Meantime, Walmart recently commenced the rollout of a mobile app that enables consumers to scan and pay for items without the need to wait in line.
While self-service checkout in itself is nothing new, the experiences that Amazon and Walmart offer do raise a compelling question for consumers and merchants: do we really need cashier and checkout lanes?
That question was the focus of a breakout session Tuesday at the fourth annual CONNECT: The Mobile CX Summit in Philadelphia. The answer is complicated, which is usually the case with emerging technology options.
“It’s critically important to evaluate what kind of experience you want in your store,” Nikki Baird, managing partner for Retail Systems Research, told attendees during the panel. “The key differentiator [for physical retail] is the employee in the store. You don’t get that on an app. You have to look really hard at the intangibles.”
