Amazon wants to turn your fridge into a store. The company is said to be developing a smart fridge, one that could make the supermarket superfluous.
The fridge has eyes
For two years – and possibly longer – Amazon has been quietly working on a smart fridge, according to Business Insider. The so-called Project Pulse reportedly receives annual funding of around 50 million dollars and falls under the same department as the physical stores that developed Amazon Go. That last fact is particularly telling because the fridge will be a tiny unstaffed store.
The smart fridge is very similar to the smart refrigerators that already exist at Samsung and LG. Just like the Samsung variant, cameras allow you always to know what’s in the fridge, keep track of expiry dates and get recipe suggestions based on your supplies.
Cameras and artificial intelligence in the latest generation of appliances also enable the fridge to recognise which products are on hand and which ones are running low. Running low on Coke? Your fridge will tell you. Links with Instacart and digital assistants such as Bixby make it possible to add products straight to your (digital) shopping list and possibly order them.
Delivered to the fridge
But it’s Amazon, so their fridge goes just a tiny bit further. Jeff Bezos’ company is turning your fridge into a mini-Amazon Go: Project Pulse “is designed to track your inventory and buying habits, predict what you want and have it delivered”, according to Insider. Thanks to Amazon Go stores, the e-commerce player is particularly good at recognising food products. At the same time, extreme amounts of consumer data go a long way towards accurately predicting future orders.
For years, Amazon has been dreaming of automatically delivering groceries to your door. Even before you realise that you ran out of coke and toilet paper, a new supply should already be waiting for you. Literally, because with a smart lock, the courier can open your door and enter the house, even when you are not at home, and put the groceries away. Fresh groceries are always at hand, in other words, without you having to do a thing.
Groceries do themselves
Why waste time on shopping when the fridge is filling up by itself? Why would anyone still go to the supermarket? A real ‘replenishment economy’ is emerging where retailers get bypassed. At least 40 per cent of all purchases will eventually be automated, machine to machine, believes Retail Prophet Doug Stephens. That is particularly interesting for Amazon: the refrigerator may well become the most loyal customer ever.
“By knowing what people will buy anytime, anywhere, rather than what they might buy, stock shifts from risk to certainty. Stock is no longer a calculated gamble but a guaranteed sale. Inventory is no longer a cost, but an achieved revenue already”, we wrote in the book The Future of Shopping: Where everyone is a retailer.
The more efficient the system becomes, the further it can be extended into the supply chain: in the replenishment economy, suppliers only produce what will undoubtedly be purchased, which reduces the risks of surpluses and considerably strengthens the producers’ negotiating position vis-à-vis retailers. Amazon may still try to push a replacement product, but the consumer certainly intends to buy.
A long-term project
It is worth noting that we wrote the above in 2017. As did we write this: “The necessary technology is already available today. Next year it could be a given.” So although it has all been theoretically possible for a long time, the reality is still a long way off. In 2021, Amazon’s smart fridge is still an obscure R&D project, on which there is no certainty whatsoever. External manufacturers still need to be found, should the fridge ever go into production. Business Insider also points out that Amazon is constantly working on many innovation projects, from robots to zeppelins, which do not always make it out of the laboratory.
Yet, Amazon has been taking steps towards automated replenishment for years. First, there were internet-connected Dash buttons for ordering new toilet rolls or washing powder in the blink of an eye. Then there were smart household appliances that ordered coffee pads or water filters automatically whenever necessary. Voice assistant Alexa only needs one command to place orders. The dream could really become a reality with a smart, self-ordering fridge: the fridge becomes a genuine unstaffed Amazon supermarket.
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