Will Ali'S "No Man Shop" Be The Way To Shop In The Future?

2017 is the first year of self-service convenience stores.

On July 8, at the site of the second Taobao Creation Festival, Alibaba The "Taobao Member Store", an unmanned store, was officially launched. The relevant person in charge of Ali said that since Ali has made every effort to promote new retail, it has been exploring the integration of online and offline. This store is one direction of Ali's new retail.

According to World Clothing, Shoes and Hats Network, this store covers an area of about 50 square meters. The backstage IoT payment scheme of "Taobao Member Store" is mainly undertaken by Ant Financial Technology Laboratory, while Design Aliyu is responsible for the implementation team.

　　 Shopping process

1) Entering the store

The reporter learned from the scene that entering the store requires mainland Alipay with real name certification. Before entering the store, open the mobile phone Taobao APP, scan the QR code exclusive to the store, and a "Alipay secret free payment" authorization interface will appear. After you agree to authorize, you will get an entry code, and then take the entry code to scan at the gate of the unmanned store, similar to the subway gate, to pass the identity authentication.

The on-site staff told the reporter that the entrance code and gate scanning are the core parts of the entire unmanned store. It can connect the customer's Taobao ID, Alipay ID and Unmanned Shop, which is the basic guarantee for Unmanned Shop to provide unmanned services.

　 2) Shopping

There are three kinds of goods in the self-service store: light catering, physical goods and shopping screens connected with shopping.

Light catering: It mainly sells simple snacks and coffee drinks. When ordering a meal at a light dining place, customers only need to report their needs, and the system will automatically deduct money from Alipay according to the content they order, without taking cash or taking out their mobile phones. After ordering a meal, wait beside it. There will be a display screen next to it. When you go to the display screen, the screen will show whether to order a meal and how long it will take to wait if you order a meal.

Physical goods: physical goods are displayed on the shelves on both sides of the self-service store. If you like them, you can take them away immediately and go to the shopping channel at the outlet.

　　 shopping Virtual large screen: when the customer sits beside the large screen, a product interface will appear at a click of the screen. Click each product to drag the product into the shopping cart, and the mobile Taobao APP shopping cart will also display synchronously.

Camera above the virtual large screen

According to the World Clothing, Shoes and Hats Network, the reason why manual Taobao can synchronize with the virtual large screen is that when a customer sits down beside the large screen, there is a camera on the top, which uses face recognition technology to automatically identify, and the customer's Taobao ID and biological signs have been authenticated at the entrance gate.

　　 3) Payment

Customers who buy food and beverage have already paid automatically in the catering area. Customers who buy physical goods only need to go to the shopping channel at the entrance of the store, and when they walk out of the system from here, they will automatically settle the bill. Similarly, they do not need a cashier, nor do they need cash.

If the customer does not shop, he/she only needs to walk out of the non shopping channel at the entrance of the store.

There is no shopping channel on the right side of the left shopping channel

Zeng Xiaodong, a senior technical expert of Ant Financial Technology Laboratory, the technical director, said that this technical scheme uses a mixture of computer vision and sensor sensing, and then superimposes non cooperative biometric technology,

In Zeng Xiaodong's eyes, no one retail store exists like this: every customer entering the store will be identified separately; Every commodity is a digital commodity, every order is a digital order, and payment is an electronic payment. Unmanned retail stores not only provide customers with a cool experience when shopping in retail stores, but also lead offline physical stores to open up a new continent of retail industry.

　　 Why does nobody shop become popular

No one store has been in Amazon since last December Go video has been a hot topic in the industry since its appearance, and in 2017, the industry's pursuit of unmanned stores reached a fever pitch. The reporter thinks that there are two main reasons why nobody shop is so popular:

1) Unmanned stores have solved the problem of "people" in the whole retail industry. Retail has long been a labor-intensive service industry. With the rise of labor costs, physical retail is overwhelmed. In order to keep the enterprise alive, layoffs have to be taken. However, layoffs will fall into a cycle of declining service levels and customer churn. The emergence of no man shop will greatly reduce the use of people, but the service has not decreased.

2) The technological breakthrough behind the unmanned store. Unmanned stores have always been the dream of retailers, but if the stores want to serve with no or few people, they must solve the payment problem. Before the breakthrough of technology, if nobody wants to make it, they must rely on human moral constraints. In recent years, with the breakthrough of Internet finance, payment technology and Internet of Things technology, this is possible.

At present, there are three main types of unmanned stores on the market: one is the Binguo Box convenience store, which is similar to Gaoxin retail, one is the widely used self-service machine on the market, and the other is the "Taobao Member Store", the unmanned store announced by Alibaba today. But so far, except for self-service machines, other self-service stores cannot be used commercially on a large scale.

　　 The reason and value of Alibaba's development of unmanned stores

Why do we want to develop unmanned stores? Zeng Xiaodong of Ant Financial told the reporter, "The technology behind unmanned retail stores is to improve the efficiency of retail stores, reduce the cost of retail stores, and make retail stores more intelligent and understanding. But what we study is not only unmanned retail stores, but a set of Internet of Things payment technology that can open and enable.

Similarly, Ying Hong, the head of Alibaba Fish, said that the future of "Taobao Club" is not that Alibaba will open a store alone, but that after the technology and cost reach a certain standard, Alibaba will authorize this set of technology to more businesses. Alibaba's role is to serve as an infrastructure service provider.

In addition, the reporter learned that Ali's unmanned store can also systematically digitize and precipitate various behaviors, interactions and details of customers in the store. After sorting out through a set of algorithm models, the owner of the physical store will have an unprecedented understanding of his store and his customers: which route customers like to take when shopping in retail stores, Which shelf has the most dense passenger flow and which shelf has the longest stay time.

The owner of the physical store can then make a targeted decision: should we adjust the placement of the popular goods; Should we optimize the shelf and commodity placement strategy for the most preferred route; If the sales performance during the peak period of passenger flow is flat, should we consider changing the recommended products during the peak period.

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