ALEXANDRIA, Va. – In this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, NACS hosts Jeff Lenard and Carolyn Schnare talk with Kevin Coupe of MorningNewsBeat.com and host of his own podcast, The Innovation Conversation.

Reprising his popular Convenience Matters appearance in December 2016, this new episode, Amazon Takes on Convenience, tackles the Amazon Go convenience store in Seattle. Despite some bumps, the fully automated store has great potential, according to Coupe, who contemplates whether other small format retailers might follow suit with semi-automated services and artificial intelligence.

The trio also talked about Amazon Alexa technology and the potential it has for making retail as convenient as possible. For example, last month Sheetz announced that it created a new skill for Alexa that enables customers to place food orders.

“Convenience stores should fight hard to retain the convenience factor in their relationship with customers. If that means exploring automation, retailers should look for ways to incorporate best practices that Amazon has implemented, remembering that good people and strong customer service can make a great difference in the end,” says Schnare.

Each week a new Convenience Matters  episode is released. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners in more than 95 countries more than 35,000 times.