Recently, an unmanned retail shop named Taocafe was opened on July 8th, 2017. If you want to shop in it, you should know some steps about how to buy and pay for the goods (货物) .
Firstly, customers need to open their Taobao App on mobile phones, and then scan the QR code(二维码)to enter the shop. After that, they don't need to use the phones while shopping. Then, after ordering products, customers need to walk through a payment door and they can finish paying for goods in a few seconds. As they leave the shop, an in door camera checks whether they paid for the goods.
Many people think that Taocafe will be opened all over the world one day, but the Alibaba chief excutive(总经理) Zhang Yong denied (否定)it. He said the initial purpose of opening this unstaffed retail shop is to serve those hoping to run a care by helping them build a smart care more easily, Alibaba won't run such shops itself. But Alibaba will offer different kinds of services to the shops, such as digital and technological platforms, payments, accounts, facial recognition.
In fact, Taocafe is not the first unmanned retail shop. In 2016, Amazon's first unstaffed store was opened in Seattle. In 2017, a Chinese company has already opened several unstaffed retail shops. Besides, a company named Wheelys has also designed to prototype (雏形) self-driving supermarket to help customers.
These unmanned retail shop all have their unique features(独特的特征), which proves that a new economy age is coming, however, some people worry that many people will lose their jobs if" the retail shops do not need workers any more.
