How tap and go tech at Marvel Stadium delivers a different shopping experience

The Just Walk Out technology at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne has improved customer experience for fans, according to AFL CIO Rob Pickering.

Installed in May this year, the technology pioneered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows fans to tap their card at the entry point, grab the food and drink they want and walk out without having to pay at a traditional cash register.

Pickering told Digital Nation the Just Walk Out technology delivers a very different shopping experience.

“In the sense that when you tap your credit card before you walk through is novel. It's a different way, it's not what we are traditionally used to,” he said.

“We were the first in the region, it's not something that someone else was doing either. We didn't have another reference point to point out. It's just like shopping at Coles, it's not it's very different.”

Pickering said at the beginning, some of the fans were perplexed by the technology.

“How does it work? What does it do? How does it operate. But when people have been once and understood how easy it is, we see a lot of repeat customers that are very high proportion of repeat customers coming back to the store because of the simplicity and the ease of transacting there,” he said.

“Again, you get your stuff and you get back to your seat in under a minute. That's a great experience to deal with.”

Pickering explained he and his team see fan affinity for the stores.

“People are very pleased with them. We've been very happy with how they performed particularly under load here where you've got a big full stadium, they still perform equally as well as when you've got a less capacious crowd," he said. 

“But we are very positive about where the Just Walk Out technology fits into our suite of offerings at the stadium and we're getting positive fan feedback.”

Pickering said he has experienced fans using the technology for the first time when it was originally rolled out.

“One of my favourite things about it is as people walk up to the exit gate, the exit gates open they pause, look around, try and work out whether that's it and they’re done,” he explained.

“It's a sense of wonder once they work it out, the ones that work out they are done, it's almost like a half smile and you see people talk to each other.”

Pickering said he was “concerned” early on about how people would adapt to it.

“Our demographics skew a little older as well, particularly at football, and how would we see an older cohort of people using that type of technology better? [We got] positive and strong feedback that people like using the stores, it's faster, they get what they need and get back to their seat,” he said.

“[I was] worried early on but I had those concerns laid quickly after one game when you see the sense of wonder on people's faces as they walk out through the gates and realise that they're done and they can walk back."