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Robots in Retail

Robots in retail? Believe it or not, it isn’t something out of sci-fi movie. Increasingly, retailers are making use of Robots to improve efficiency and cut labor costs.

By most accounts, Amazon is leading in the retail robotics race. It now has an estimated 45,000 robots at its distribution centers – up from 15,000 in 2014. Part of its strategy to cut costs involves replacing Human Labor with robot labor. In fact, it is now estimated that shipping the average Amazon package requires a mere 60 seconds of human labor. And it has even opened its own store in Seattle without any kind of cashiers. Customers simply pick up products from the shelves and are charged directly via their Amazon Prime accounts.

However, it isn’t just Amazon that is leveraging the power of robots to its advantage. Other stores are getting in on the robot trend. Walmart, for example, has reduced its staff by 15 percent over the course of the past 10 years, in part thanks to its increased use of robots. And analysts predict that robots in retail stores across the US could increasingly become more mainstream.

The shift to robots has its pros and cons. But among the biggest cons is the threat it poses to jobs in the retail sector. This sector currently employs an estimated 16 million people in the US or around 10 percent of the US working population. According to recent analysis conducted by the Cornerstone Capital Group, approximately 7.5 million retailer jobs are at a high risk of computerization.

Nevertheless, others argue that robots in retail don’t have to be catastrophic for workers, pointing out that that checkout-free stores are still a long way away and not necessarily something on all retailers’ minds. “Smart retailers are using digital to make their associates better at their jobs, not eliminate their jobs,” explains Brendan Witcher, an e-commerce analyst with Forrester.

So, where is this all headed? The bottom line is that the use of robots will without a doubt become more common in retail stores, but it remains unclear whether retailers will use these robots to replace human labor altogether or just to improve it.

The post Robots in Retail appeared first on Store Fixtures Blog.



This post first appeared on Affordable Store Fixtures And Displays For Retail, please read the originial post: here

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Robots in Retail

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