Why Amazon Sparrow will change e-commerce

Amazon's research team recently unveiled their robotics picking system, “Sparrow”, which will be used for automated picking in Amazon's fulfillment centers. Read here why online retailers should address this development.

Even though Amazon Sparrow has been running in a lab environment so far, it's worth looking now at how the use of the picking solution will impact e-commerce market dynamics.

Here's why:

• The fact that the e-commerce giant is having a tremendous impact on the market is demonstrated by the very fact that one of the biggest market trends of the past few years was named after it: The "Amazon Effect" refers to the disruptive impact of e-commerce on the global retail industry.
• And even within e-commerce, Amazon has always set the standard: Through value propositions like 1-day delivery and free shipping, Amazon shapes what customers expect from online retailers in general.
• With Sparrow, Amazon plans to automate one of the core processes in their warehouses, bin picking, which will make increase throughput and efficiency in order processing. This will most likely result in higher value propositions and thus increased customer demands.
• To remain competitive with Amazon, e-commerce companies need to exploit automation potential in their warehouses to ensure an efficient and stable supply chain.