Will Smart Carts Pay Off Better Than ‘Just Walk Out’ for Amazon?

Amazon plans to remove its “Just Walk Out” technology — which allows customers to shop and leave the store without going to a register — from Amazon Fresh stores, replacing it with its Dash Cart smart shopping cart device.

The change, first reported by The Information, only affects 27 of Amazon Fresh’s 44 U.S. locations that use the technology. The remaining stores already use Dash Cart. Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology will still be used by the Amazon Go mini C-store concept, the smaller-format Amazon Fresh stores in the U.K., as well as the more than 130 third-party retailers that have partnered with Amazon on the technology, including several ballparks, airports, college stores, and cafes.

Amazon told media outlets that the decision to remove the technology at its Amazon Fresh U.S. stores was due to customer feedback.

“We’ve invested a lot of time redesigning a number of our Amazon Fresh stores over the last year, offering a better overall shopping experience with more value, convenience, and selection — and so far we’ve seen positive results, with higher customer shopping satisfaction scores and increased purchasing,” Amazon said in a statement. “We’ve also heard from customers that while they enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store.”

The change comes after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in February 2023 said Amazon Fresh openings would be paused “until we have that equation with differentiation and economic value that we like.”

First announced in July 2020 and majorly upgraded in 2022, Dash Cart operates on a technology platform similar to Just Walk Out. Shoppers using the smart shopping cart scan the QR code on their Amazon app to begin browsing the store. A combination of computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion identifies items as they’re placed in the cart. When done, customers are automatically charged and avoid the cashier as they walk out.

One challenge to Just Walk Out technology, first introduced in 2016, was that it often took hours for customers to receive receipts after leaving the store, largely because a team of more than 1,000 workers in India was rewatching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts, according to The Information’s report.

Amazon told Gizmodo that the primary role of the outsourced workers was to annotate video images and train the AI, and they validated only “a small minority” of shopper receipts, although sources told The Information that about 70% of receipts required human reviews.

Critics of Just Walk Out technology in the past have questioned the costs and structural challenges related to placing video cameras and other hardware in store ceilings. Privacy advocates have also raised concerns about the Just Walk Out technology’s access to customers’ personal data, including their in-store behavior.

Dash Cart’s appeal also remains debatable. A Business Insider article from 2022 found that although customers like Dash Cart’s running tally of the items they pick up, usage had been well below Amazon’s expectations due to the cart being unsuitable for large items because of its size, prohibited from rolling to the shopper’s car, and having scanning issues.

After removing the Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Fresh shoppers will still have the option to check out with a cashier or use self-checkout lanes.