Peterson, Hayley. “Amazon Is About to Become the Biggest Clothing Retailer in the US.” Business Insider.
With the announcement of Amazon Go, a cashier-less convenience
store, the firm entered the brick-and-mortar business. But with a
twist: customers at the first Amazon Go groceries-and-goods stores
can simply buy items by walking out of the store. Sensors scan your
bags, and your app, as you walk out. There’s no checkout.
Other retailers, once again rocked back on their heels, are now
scrambling to eliminate their own checkout processes. Whom does
this latest Amazon maneuver put at risk? The 3.4 million Americans
(2.6 percent of the U.S. workforce) employed as cashiers.^38 That’s a lot
of workers—close to the number of primary and secondary school
teachers in the United States.^39
As retailers are coping with the zig of Amazon Go, hardware
makers, and soon brands, are trying to cope with the zag of Amazon
Echo.
Echo is the speaker-like cylinder, and Alexa is its artificial
intelligence, named after the library of Alexandria.^40 Alexa is designed