Page 39 - HW FEBRUARY 2022

Amazon, Aldi and IKEA think outside the square
Customers wishing to purchase alcohol use facial age estimation technology through the Aldi Shop&Go app to authorise their purchase. Those who opt to not use the system can be age verified by staff.
www.aldi.co.uk
CHANGING CONSUMER HABITS like working from home are encouraging the world’s retail giants to make sure they’re addressing different, sometimes smaller, local markets.
Amazon Goes suburban – Looking
to boost its bricks & mortar presence, online giant Amazon for example plans to open cashier-less Amazon Go stores in suburbs.
With the format previously reserved for major city centre sites, the first suburban Amazon Go store will be in
a suburb outside Seattle, followed by another in the Los Angeles metro area, and will offer the same services as their inner-city cousins but will be larger at around 550m2 compared to the 90-180m2 footprints of the urban Go stores.
It’s been reported that the spread of Go is as much to do with Amazon lowering the cost of the technology involved as much as seeking out fresh new markets for the no-contact format.
www.amazon.com
Aldi trials checkout-free – Aldi, the UK’s fifth largest supermarket, has opened its first checkout-free store in Greenwich, London, for public testing, having finished in-house trials.
Similar to Amazon Go, Aldi’s test store allows customers to complete their shopping without scanning products or going through a checkout.
Instead, Aldi’s Shop&Go app allows entry to the store and automatic charges for the goods chosen which are identified using cameras.
IKEA shrinks to grow – Meanwhile in the UK, this month IKEA is opening its first small format shop, marking a further move into city centres in addition to the Swedish retail giant’s habitual out-of- town possies.
Convenient for customers to arrive by bus or tube, the two-storey 4,600m2 store is situated in the LIVAT Hammersmith complex which is also owned by IKEA Group.
The store will offer a reduced range of some 4,000 products, of which around half will be available to take away while the rest are available online for home delivery or collection.
The store’s layout also breaks away from IKEA’s normal routine, with products located in and around a series of room settings, rather than in a separate market hall.
Peter Jelkeby, Country Retail Manager and Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA UK & Ireland, says the new store format “marks the next step in our business transformation as we strive to make IKEA more accessible, affordable and sustainable.”
In this latter respect the store boasts
a BREEAM Outstanding rating for sustainability, which puts it in the top 1% of rated buildings.
In other UK news, in January IKEA cut sick pay to paid Statutory Sick Pay levels for unvaccinated staff who need to self- isolate because of Covid exposure and in some cases for workers who test positive.
global eyes
www.ikea.com/gb/en/
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FEBRUARY 2022 | NZHJ 37