Dominant in the virtual world, giants like Amazon, Alibaba and JD are eyeing high street retail for a new revolution in the consumer shopping experience. In common, the trio seeks to take technology from the virtual world to the physical space of stores in an attempt to enter the fresh food segment with force.
Video 1 – See how a 7Fresh store works in China
Source: YouTube
While in the United States, Amazon presents its Amazon Go and acquired the supermarket chain Whole Foods, earlier this year, JD launched its first futuristic store of the 7Fresh chain in Beijing. Like Amazon Go, 7Fresh offers the possibility of payment via digital wallet, without the need to pass the goods at the cashier. Among 7Fresh's main innovations is the use of a robot cart, which follows the customer along the shelves to collect purchases. The store still uses big data analytics to align its assortment of products with the needs of its consumer and also has Magic Mirrors, displays that present information about a product as soon as it is removed from the shelf by the customer.
Photo 1 – 7Fresh robot carts
Source: 7Fresh
7Fresh is JD's response to Hema, the supermarket chain of its competitor Alibaba. Currently, the chain has 25 stores in China, where customers use an application to search for nutritional data, supplier, price, among other information. Following the trend of supermarkets of the future, Hema stores also do not have a cashier and customers pay for purchases using Alipay, a digital wallet developed by the Alibaba group.
Video 2 – Take a tour of a Hema store
Source: Alibaba
In addition to fresh fruits, the use of apps and leaving the cash registers aside, 7Fresh and Hema bear another similarity: they all offer 30-minute deliveries to customers' homes, varying only in the maximum distance for delivery. If you can't go to the store to select the products, that's okay. The two networks also allow virtual purchases, with the same 30-minute delivery system. In this case, employees receive the order and make the picking and packing in the store itself, among the other customers. Finally, a conveyor belt system on the roof of the stores takes orders to an adjacent hub, which then ships the items to the customer's home.
Photo 2 – Hema employee picks up the order online to pick it up in the store
Source: Alibaba
So much technology brings back a question, at least in the United States: what will the jobs of supermarket employees look like? Just like in its tech-heavy distribution centers, Amazon argues that its employees are still there, just performing other functions, such as store resupply and customer support, among other functions.
References:
https://www.retaildetail.eu/en/news/food/say-hello-7fresh-jdcoms-high-tech-supermarket
Alexandre Lobo
https://ilos.com.brGraduated in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and in Social Communication from Faculdades Integradas Hélio Alonso (FACHA). Expertise in several projects with emphasis on market analysis for companies such as Unilever, Intertank, Invepar, Aqces, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank.
