Misconceptions Abound as Amazon Shrinks Just Walk Out

Amazon Fresh markets move to Dash Carts

The tech world was all a titter this week, with the news that Amazon is retooling its Just Walk Out program, nixing the self-checkout tech from its Fresh brand of grocery stores. But contrary to the impression left by some eye-grabbing writeups, the company isn’t killing off the tech completely, nor did the computer vision program secretly rely wholly on a team of human watchers in developing countries.

So What Is Amazon Doing?

Take it straight from Amazon’s Jessica Martin:

"We’ve invested a lot of time redesigning a number of our Amazon Fresh stores over the last year, offering a better overall shopping experience with more value, convenience, and selection—and so far we’ve seen positive results, with higher customer shopping satisfaction scores and increased purchasing."

"We’ve also heard from customers that while they enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store." "To deliver even more convenience to our customers, we’re rolling out Amazon Dash Cart, our smart-shopping carts, which allows customers all these benefits including skipping the checkout line."

So, Amazon plans to transition many of its full-scale Amazon Fresh grocery stores from one self check-out solution to another. At the moment, Amazon operates 44 supermarkets, largely in Southern California (the first one opened in the LA neighborhood of Woodland Hills.) Of those, 27 use “Just Walk Out,” where customers scan their phones or palms to enter the store, cameras track their movements and what items they pick up, and they’re then charged for what they took upon leaving.

The remaining stores use Dash Carts, which confine the cameras and sensors to the customer’s shopping cart, scanning and tabulating items as they’re put in the basket. Amazon has been pretty inconsistent about which markets get which tech: sometimes stores just a few miles apart will use the competing solutions. Now Amazon is homogenizing its in-store technology, with Dash Carts winning out. This is no great surprise, as the shopping experience in the camera-festooned Just Walk Out stores was downright unpleasant, and despite that the stores could still take hours to generate customer receipts.

It’s like shopping in a dreary panopticon!

Clearing Up Misconceptions