Amazon Go

That's no change. Between customer loyalty cards and the easy ability to tie purchases to credit cards, if they wanted to do that they already could.

I'm not sure it buys them anything, though. That's a very noisy signal against the loud-and-clear signal of what the measurements say when you come in to the doctor. Who cares what your shopping habits say when you come in with high blood pressure and morbid obesity, or good blood pressure and normal weight?

The change is specifically in in-store behavior. And even that's more because Amazon has the money and skillset to fund the software; the supermarkets already have the data in the sense that they have the video streams, they just don't have the money to fund people running beyond-cutting-edge vision research on it to get that level of analysis.

Of course they would have the money, but things work fine for them right now.

And they are not technology companies.

I agree with you, a lot of that data would already be available. The question is how much more willing Amazon would be to sell the data, compared to supermarket chains. Probably it's not difference.

I was just extrapolating what the OP meant.

I personally would really love shopping like that.

If I knew my loyalty card was being used for insurance, I'd have two: one for healthy stuff linked to my real name, and another for everything else (linked to a fake name).