The article didn't touch on how this approach reduces friction for buyers, which is hugely important. For the short-to-mid term, I suspect that frictionless shopping is a bigger deal than change in cost structure that comes from booting cashiers.
Stratechery has a giant blind spot about Amazon's strategy, completely missing their #1 objective: customer obsession.
Bezos was clear about this from the beginning [0] and he repeats it every chance he gets [1]. He's not just bullshitting, this is actually the strategy, and it fucking works!
Stratechery opined that the Whole Foods deal was about putting Amazon products in physical stores. Of course not, it's the opposite -- it's about bringing awesome Whole Foods products to far more customers than Whole Foods reaches today.
Now Stratechery says Amazon Go is about eliminating cashier labor and leveraging fixed costs. Ridiculous!
If a well-paid cashier costs $15 per hour and can scan 12 items per minute, the cost is only 2 cents per item.
In fact, the cashier savings is probably more than offset by additional labor on the sales floor and to maintain all the sensors, cameras, turnstiles and software.
This is all about Bezos' customer obsession. If I don't have to wait in line, I'll happily shop Amazon Go every time I can, multiple trips per week. As a customer I'd be thrilled to eliminate the dead time of waiting in a line.
The article didn't touch on how this approach reduces friction for buyers, which is hugely important. For the short-to-mid term, I suspect that frictionless shopping is a bigger deal than change in cost structure that comes from booting cashiers.