The old days of retailers quietly testing new tech offstage are a relic of the past. Welcome to the launch and learn era, where retailers are ditching the warm-up act and releasing tech straight into consumer environments before the kinks are worked out. It's a gutsy game of moving fast and iterating even faster based on real-time shopper feedback. This high-risk, high-reward strategy aims to keep retailers innovating at a rapid pace, but it isn’t without potential pitfalls.

Carol dives into this new frontier, unpacking how major retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Amazon are unleashing shiny new tech onto unsuspecting customers first and figuring out the bugs and backlash as they go.

Key examples discussed include:

• Best Buy's new AI assistant built to support (or replace?) human assistance.
• Walmart's rocky road with self-checkout scaling.
• Amazon's pivot to smart Dash carts after pulling "Just Walk Out" tech from Fresh stores.

Carol explores how the exponential pace of tech innovation, razor-thin competitive windows, and the lure of cost cuts are fading the idea of perfecting solutions before launch.

But diving head-first into uncharted waters has its hazards. Consumers expecting seamless experiences are instead being used as guinea pigs, sparking confusion and triggering control issues. On the flip side, retailers are placing big bets that the efficiencies will pay off by hitting "launch" first and making the business case later.

Key Takeaways:

• How tensions can flare when consumer expectations and retailer justifications are at odds.
• How some retailers are balancing high-tech and high-touch solutions on the front end rather than lurching between extremes.
• Why retailers are trading between live experiments instead of defaulting to the tried and true.
• Why Amazon’s checkout tech pivots are the ultimate launch-and-learn case study.

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