Amazon Plans To Open Its First Retail In Germany

JAKARTA - The giant marketplace company from the United States, Amazon, plans to open its first retail store in Germany. Amazon head Ralf Kleber said the plan was based on Germany, which is Amazon's second largest market after the United States.

"In fact, we know that customers who shop offline and they [Germany] like a variety of products," said Ralf Kleber quoted by Reuters, Monday, January 6.

However, his party was reluctant to disclose in detail regarding the realization of the opening of the store. Amazon previously operated stores in the US, UK, including the Whole Foods and Amazon Go food supply chains.

Kleber also said that Amazon wants to encourage an increase in the amount of shopping through AI virtual devices, namely Amazon Alexa, which is the smart Echo Dot speaker, which is priced cheaply and encourages wider adoption.

Recently, Amazon made headlines for its intention to develop an Amazon Go cashier-less shop. Later, visitors can shop simply by using their hand scanner. Each customer's hand scanner is associated with each person's bank account.

If Amazon succeeds in building such a system, customers will no longer need to carry their wallets, credit cards, or cell phones with them to make payments. All they have to do is scan their hand and bank account automatically and will be charged a fee for their purchase.

2019 is quite an important year for Amazon. This company recorded a share price increase of about 20% throughout the year. Unfortunately, the company lost its Pentagon contract worth 10 billion US dollars because it lost competitiveness with Microsoft.