The Guardian: Last month, and on the heels of its latest cashier-less grocery store opening in Chicago, Bloomberg reported that the online giant Amazon.com is planning on opening about 3,000 similar outlets by 2021.
Now Sam’s Club, which is owned by Walmart, is getting into the cashier-less game with the opening of its first Sam’s Club Now store in Dallas.
“There won’t be another club like it,” the SamsClub.com CEO, Jamie Iannone, wrote in a blog post. “It will be a mobile-first shopping experience powered by the new Sam’s Club Now app. At its core, Sam’s Club Now will be a technology lab that doubles as a live, retail club. It’s where we will incubate, test and refine technologies to help define the future of retail.”
Like Amazon Go, customers at Sam’s Club Now will need to download a mobile app that will enable them to scan items picked from the shelf with their smartphone, which will then automatically charge their stored credit card. However, Sam’s Club – who seems to trust their customers a little bit less than Amazon – will still require a final scan by an employee before walking out the door…
Amazon and Walmart together are among the top retailers in the world. Assuming each finds success (translation: profits) from this new form of automated and self-service approach to shopkeeping, it won’t be long before the trend sweeps across the entire industry. The obvious benefits would be a dramatic decrease in overhead and fewer headaches finding, managing and compensating employees. Other benefits will come in the form of more marketing data, more targeted deals and a faster and more satisfying experience for customers – particularly urban customers – who want their stuff quick and convenient…
Our Comment:
The more cashless there is, the more control over customers with even the potential to bar customers from shopping. If the government were to target certain people because they don’t go along with prophetically predicted worship laws, how easy would it be, if most shops and chain stores are cashless and compliant, to restrict their ability to shop and even to live? And while you’re at it, imagine what trying to live in a city where you can’t grow your own food very well when those who worship according to God’s law are banned from shopping?
Prophetic Link:
“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:15-17.