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Amazon Go is going to shake up retail, big time
Since it launched in beta format in 2016, and then opened to the public a year later, Amazon Go, the online retail giant’s stores without checkout lines, provides a textbook illustration of the use and development of technology.
Amazon’s plans to expand its network of stores, formulated before the pandemic, were ambitious: in locations including international airports, expanding the concept to larger and more sophisticated outlets, and above all, adapting the model into a technological platform for third parties.
Out of these original plans, the expansion of company-owned stores, hit by the pandemic lockdowns, : by March, only : 32 in the United States, and three in the United Kingdom. But the company was able to scale up the model from its original convenience store concept to , as well as packaging it and turning it into a platform that has already seduced several major customers, such as in the United Kingdom — , with — Starbucks, which is , and the U.S. chains and .