Walgreens Replaced Fridge Doors With Smart Screens. It's Now a $200 Million Fiasco
owl writes:
Archive Link: https://archive.is/LxGQ6
The refrigerated section at the flagship Walgreens on Chicago's Magnificent Mile was glowing with frozen food and bottled drinks, but not for long. Where the fridge cases were previously lined with simple glass doors, there were door-size computer screens instead. These "smart doors" obscured shoppers' view of the fridges' actual contents, replacing them with virtual rows of the Gatorades, Bagel Bites and other goods it promised were inside. The digital displays had a distinct advantage over regular glass, at least for the retailer: ads. When proximity sensors detected passersby, the fridge doors started playing short videos hawking Doritos or urging customers to check out with Apple Pay. If this sounds disruptive-in the ordinary sense of the word, not Silicon Valley's-that might have seemed a generous description in December 2023, when all the screens went blank.
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