Why did Amazon Go stores fail?

Amazon Go stores failed as a large-scale retail format because Amazon did not find an economic model strong enough to justify broad expansion. Amazon itself said it had not created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economics for scale in its Amazon-branded physical grocery and convenience stores. In plain terms, the model was expensive, hard to scale, and less compelling than Amazon’s stronger grocery bets. The store concept was innovative, but innovation alone did not make the retail footprint efficient enough. That does not mean the underlying cashierless technology disappeared. Amazon continued using and licensing checkout technology in other contexts. The failure was mainly about store economics and format strategy, not about the idea of frictionless checkout in every setting.