Amazon has been testing cashierless stores, that much is known. However the problem with most of these outlets is that they’re essential a testing grounds for the technology, meaning that while you can legitimately shop at them, they’re generally too small if you’re trying to buy enough groceries for the week or month.
However like we said, we imagine that the purpose of these stores are mostly for testing purposes, so it is understandable that Amazon is trying to keep it simple. However according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it seems that Amazon could soon be expanding the testing of its cashierless checkouts to larger stores.
The report claims that over in Seattle, Amazon has a space that they’ve formatted like a big store and are using that space to test out its technology. So far it seems that using the same technology used in its smaller stores doesn’t work quite as well in a larger setting, as the higher ceilings and the wide variety of products have been causing some issues.
This suggests that it could take a while before we start seeing this technology applied to larger stores. It has been presumed that Amazon could apply this technology to Whole Foods (which it owns) upon successful testing, which makes sense since it would be easier than Amazon building a brand new chain of grocery stores.
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