The American retail industry was bracing itself yesterday for a new onslaught by Amazon, amid reports that the ecommerce giant could open as many as 3,000 high-tech inner-city grocery shops by 2021.
The $940bn company, whose main businesses are online retailing and cloud computing, was said to be considering a wider expansion of Amazon Go, a grocery shop concept that has no cashiers and uses an artificially intelligent motion-tracking system to record what shoppers buy.
Amazon has poured considerable resources into its grocery business in the past 15 months, not least buying Whole Foods, the upmarket organic grocer, for $13.7 billion last summer.
