Amazon's Brilliant Low-Tech Stores

These insights are based on an article from CNBC titled, "Amazon is opening a real-world clothing store with high-tech fitting rooms"

“You’ll find everything from the $10 basic to the designer jeans to the $400 timeless piece,” Simoina Vasen, managing director of Amazon Style"

Perhaps the real genius behind this store is not in the retail technology (which is average for a brand like Amazon), but rather in the data analysis we don't see. The $10-$400 merchandise spectrum sets up the store as a sensitive instrument to gauge and eventually influenced shopper behavior.

Assuming they rig the store with the same monitoring infrastructure as an Amazon Go store, these stores become spaces to study the dynamics of human shopping behavior in the physical store. Amazon already knows everything to know about human shopping behavior online. Their weakness is that they know much less about typical shopping behavior in the physical store. (outside of grocery w/Whole Foods Market)

Learnings from shopper behavior in physical stores will likely inform their strategies online. For the consumer, shopping is shopping. Even more important, (and perhaps a little disturbing), these stores may not only be about learning, but also about influencing. They'll be able run experiments designed to address questions like, "How do I take a shopper interested in a $10 basic and routinely engage with them (over time, digitally, physically, online, instore, etc.) in such a way that they eventually (and perhaps consistently) complete the purchase of a $400 timeless piece."

While there may be a diminishing return on retail technology, there is an unlimited, proliferating return on customer insights and the unfettered ability to test/influence shopping behavior!