Autonomous Checkout – the future for retail?

Dan Munford and Frank Beard are joined by Jesse Chester, Category Leadership Director at Mars, Scott Wu, Compass Group North America’s Chief Technology Officer of Compass Digital Labs and Jordan Fisher, Standard AI’s CEO for this latest Shop Talk LIVE.

The future is not about if frictionless is happening, rather it is now about retailers and suppliers refining autonomous models and operations in order to maximise efficiencies and profitability. This goal will involve developing a new approach to shopping and the evolution of a whole new set of retail standards.

What is the best approach to take – ‘sensor-fusion’ or computer-vision only? How can a new, more interesting relationship be developed with customers when the machinery of the transaction has been taken away? Is it likely that retailers with existing, large store estates must necessarily take a different approach to this?

Dan and Frank discuss why they find the trend fascinating and their recent experiences of Amazon Fresh, Tesco GetGo, Sainsbury’s SmartShop Pick&Go, Woosox Market, plus thoughts on Carrefour Flash and ADNOC’s new frictionless store.

Standard AI have chosen to focus on a computer-vision only approach to frictionless and CEO Jordan Fisher explains why shelf sensors and exit turnstiles can be a hinderance to staff and customers from a merchandising, to an ease of access perspective. Also, fundamentally, for retailers who already have thousands of stores trading (mainly with cash transactions) it may just not make sense to place barriers for existing customers.

For a retailer perspective we are joined by Compass Group’s Scott Wu who shares its journey into autonomous checkouts – the learnings, benefits and technology helping redeploy employees and benefits beyond eliminating queues. Given the global scale Compass have in 55 countries and the number of years they have been deploying these solutions they have a lot of learnings which are highly interesting.

Mars’ Jesse Chester brings the supplier perspective – without a checkout how do we recapture the impulse buyers? How can the new technology be utilised to benefit retailer and supplier relationships?

Frictionless, autonomous, unattended, or Just Walk Out? Well, even with a lack of consensus about the description, this trend appears established and highly significant.