Amazon is considering bringing the technology embedded in Go stores to third-party merchants.
Retail market players report that the Internet giant may start working with airport stores, movie theaters and other venues on this issue.
Thus, Amazon can significantly expand its presence in retail and reduce the dependence of its own operating indicators on online trading. At the same time, the company will cost less than when creating its own chain of stores. In addition, Amazon will build strong relationships with competing retailers that could further grow its cloud business.
To date, the company operates 16 Amazon Go stores, where customers shop using their smartphone, without traditional checkouts and sellers. Now Amazon is interested in bringing the core technology of this format to other companies' retail outlets.
The company is negotiating the supply of Go equipment to CIBO Express stores at airports and Cineworld cinemas. An experiment to bring Amazon Go technologies to third-party stores could begin as early as the first quarter of 2020, and by the end of the year there will be several hundred such stores.
AT Amazon countthat the process of updating the retail outlet will take no more than two weeks. It remains unclear whether the Amazon brand will appear on installed hardware, or what application will be used to log customers into the system. Amazon is expected to take a percentage of sales from its partners, or charge retailers up front and a monthly fee to use the technology.
Amazon first entered the offline market in 2015 with the opening of a physical bookstore. The first store of the innovative Go format was opened in Seattle in 2018. Today the network operates in four cities. Two more stores are about to open. The company's portfolio also includes an Amazon 4-Star physical store that offers products with positive customer reviews. Earlier it was reported that the company plans to open up to 3,000 Go stores by the end of 2021, but it is not yet clear whether this is in-house development of the network, or the introduction of technology to other stores.
