A new phase in omni-channel strategy: the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, has launched the Amazon Go – a physical store without cashiers and thus – without queuing. Rami Jaulus, CEO of NGG, indicates Amazon’s ability to identify trends and customer needs time after time, and hence, offer them the right solution
Last week, retail-giant Amazon has launched a new service – Amazon Go. This is a new concept of stores – one without queuing and without cashiers. The customer enters the store while scanning their smart phone as a form of identification, then proceeds to stock up on available goods. Once the shopping spree is over, the customer simply leaves the store with everything in hand, already purchased. Amazon’s system identifies the items the customer chose, auto-charges the credit card information linked to the phone and sends the bill via the registered email account. The first store network is expected to open in early 2017 in Seattle, USA.
The body who set up this new store is the same company that initially introduced us to the experience of buying online, and thus, evoked the great revolution in consumption habits around the globe. Amazon made, at the time, the transition from physical to virtual stores. Now it is taking the opposite direction, yet a needed one, heading right back into the physical stores.
Amazon noticed an up rise in the occurring trend and needs of consumers, which have developed simultaneously:
- The basic human need to touch and feel. Not only did the physical shopping experience not disappear, but returns stronger, more innovative and updated than ever!
- Integrated technology in the shopping experience, using multi-channel tools – our online Amazon account is billed for shopping we have carried out in the physical store!
Amazon’s new store combines the physical space with the digital space, improves the shopping experience of customers in the store, and meets the need for a tangible experience, parallel to a virtual one. Evidently, this is multi-channel service is at its best.
Will the store succeed? Will the customers trust the new, innovative system? Will we see something similar in other parts of the world? Only time will tell.
By GemPlan