Chinese e-commerce giants, technology device producers and financial solution providers are shaping the retail industry in China and the world at large, industry leaders and insiders said at a major retail convention and expo.
"We don't see this kind of application of facial recognition linked with payment. It's so cool. It's really interesting. We're talking about this in Europe, and we don't have it either," said Elisabeth Orn Sylve with Swedish operations of Microsoft Corporation on her tour to the booth of Freshippo, a robot-driven restaurant and supermarket operated by China-based Alibaba Group.
China players scale up applications
Freshippo makes its debut at the ongoing Retail's Big Show 2019 organized by the US National Retail Federation, showcasing its unmanned check-out devices featuring facial recognition, camera surveillance and others.
"We have a number of advantages compared with other countries in the world" as China's mobile internet witnesses fast development, said Xulin Guo, chief of staff and business assistant to CEO of Freshippo.
The advantage of Freshippo also lies in the strong support from technology research and development division with Alibaba Group, Guo told Xinhua on Monday.
"We see the future of retail industry featuring better customers' experience and high operating efficiency and takes efforts to materialize the envisioned products step by step," said Guo, hoping to offer inspirations to peers in the world.
Alibaba has rolled out more than 10,000 self-checkout machines at its own offline stores and stores operated by third parties since the launch of the product around a year ago, according to Freshippo.
It is estimated that the self-checkout machines would be able to do the job of three to six cashiers, and customers could save 30 percent of time in checking out.
Alibaba has opened around 120 Freshippo chain supermarkets in around 20 Chinese cities since the opening of the first store in January 2016.
As the third largest internet firm in the world by revenue and a major e-commerce platform, JD.com has cutting edge technological application at scale with over 100 drone bases across China, said Harlan Bratcher, global business development head of JD Fashion on Tuesday in a dialogue at Retail's Big Show 2019.
JD.com has introduced pilot drone-enabled delivery of goods in mountainous areas in Southwest China and opened about 20 unmanned stores in China and another one in Indonesia.
