Owning nearly 500 Whole Foods stores across the country, Amazon plans to expand America’s grocery spending with a new marketing concept that would operate within a larger and more convenient cashier-less store. This next project is what Amazon plans to set forward in America’s marketing future.

After purchasing Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion, Amazon plans to open its own markets “in major U.S. cities [to separate] from Whole Foods,” reported the Wall Street Journal. Making its distinction from Whole Foods, Amazon Go will provide cheaper products, such as beauty and health items, to consumers. 

As the first cashier-less grocery store opened in downtown Seattle on Feb. 25, Amazon Go plans to carry a variety of products, ranging from food to household essentials. Taking the marketing process to a greater scale, the company aims to stock about 5,000 items in their stores’ inventory. Bill Bishop, the co-founder of retail and grocery consulting firm, Brick Meets Click, mentioned that Amazon has “doubled down” in becoming a larger participant in the industry in addition to pioneering a new grocery concept.

Currently, Amazon posits its new store as a “neighborhood market” and aims to launch its stores closer to customers’ homes. Cameron Janes, vice president of the company’s physical retail division, explained the reason for this decision: “Customers on their way home, customers by their home, what they want is groceries. They want what’s for dinner tonight.” 

The location of these stores also play a significant part in the new grocery plan. Amazon intends to lure nearby consumers among the business districts and homes that surround the 10,400 square foot building in downtown Seattle into purchasing their groceries and products. 

Back in 2018, Amazon released its first Amazon Go stores across several states, changing the future of retail. Since then, Amazon has improved its cashier-less stores. In the 25 Amazon Go stores the company operates, reliance on technology has increased. 

The new grocery stores will depend on sensors to detect the types of products customers pick off the shelves. Afterwards, the shoppers will pay for their sackful of groceries without any assistance from a cashier. 

Diving into the deep end of the company’s goal to establish Amazon Go, CNN Business reported Amazon intends “to crack the more than $800 billion US grocery market.” 

Though only a fraction of Americans purchase fresh produce online, Amazon Go will allow customers to choose the option of buying products in-store or online and will enable the company to minimize its spending on hiring workers. 

As Amazon tackles its new goal of constructing a technologically-advanced grocery store, it plans to focus mainly on how customers perceive this new concept. “For now, what we are focused on is this concept and [seeing] what customers think of it— [then going] from there,” said Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology. Along with opening new grocery stores, Amazon seeks to open its own supermarkets as well. As the first Amazon Go supermarket is slated to arrive in Los Angeles, Janes has stated that this big city market will be “a store with a more traditional checkout experience.”

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