Frictionless Replenish

Frictionless replenish was born to make shopping a more dynamic, automated, and customer-friendly experience. Essentially, brands don’t any anything to stand in the way or slow down the process of shopping, particularly when we look at shopping in brick and mortar stores. One roadblock that deters people from shopping in actual stores is the checkout line – you know, the line with the slow cashier and people fumbling for their coupons and struggling to use the credit card chip reader? Often times, we can also find ourselves struggling to find the location of a product within the actual store, which only slows down our shopping process even more.

Therefore, the new Amazon Go concept store in Seattle, WA has shoppers walk through the store and pickup the items they want, just like a traditional shopping experience. However, when shopper takes their items off the selves, shelf sensors and special video cameras record the products they take. When they head to the checkout line, nothing has to be scanned or bagged – their credit card is just charged automatically without any fuss or inconvenience.

This is only one type of frictionless shopping we will likely see everywhere in the future. The frictionless experience also works its way into the automatic product replenish sector as well – something that is only in the first stages of production. If frictionless shopping means creating a more streamlined and automatic shopping experience, expanding on the concept of automatic product replenish is a no brainer. It is all well and good to press an Amazon Tide button and have more shipped to your house or to sign up for monthly deliveries of cat food so you never run out. But what about a package or container that can actually detect its contents running low and send out a single that automatically purchases more? This makes the consumer’s life much easier, as they will never have to think about re-ordering basic needs, like laundry detergent, again.

But the benefits don’t end there. Brands can use smart packages to gather valuable information about their customers usage habits, how often they run out, how much they use at a time, etc. Once a customer links their product to a specialized app, the information is automatically sent to the app where all usage data is recorded. The product ecosystem can gather and interpret usage habits and provide insights to the brand’s team so they can take customer experience to the next level. For instance, special offers and coupons can be sent to the customer once they buy a certain amount of the product – this will facilitate more sales and better customer loyalty to the brand.

Frictionless and automatic replenish and smart packaging all embody the future of shopping and easier, better customer experience. We are entering a world where running out of essential household items will be a thing of the past and your favorite brands will know what you want and need, even before you do.