Amazon’s cashierless grocery store plans

An article in Business Insider (December 6,2016) titled “Amazon’s new grocery store highlights a huge hole in Donald Trump’s promise on jobs” describes plans by Amazon to open thousands of stores where customers can check into the store with their phones, shop and leave, with their Amazon account getting billed. The new cashierless stores have the potential to eliminate close to 857,000 jobs in grocery stores, and if replicated across other retailers, eliminate 3.5 million cashier jobs in the US.  Will the automation of cashiers and the benefit to customers generate new industries to absorb these cashiers ?  Will other customer services, such as cooking or chopping, which might add value to grocery items, become the new norm for grocery stores to add value ?

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1 Response to Amazon’s cashierless grocery store plans

  1. Kyle Harshbarger's avatar Kyle Harshbarger says:

    Automated grocery stores, trucks, taxis, …, professors (MOOCs)!?

    Somehow technological advancement through the years has hurt and eventually destroyed inefficient industries and business models, but out of the ashes rise better industries and business models. The end result on human time usage is increased time spent on leisure activities. The people losing employment must find ways to entertain others. This likely means higher activity in amusement parks, video games, virtual reality, news, sports, movies, etc.

    Smaller portions of our labor will be used for value-added industries and more towards maintenance (health care included) and leisure. This likely means those that are finding ways to add value will capture large profits while making everyone’s lives better.

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