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Pereira, J., Viseu, A., Delicado, Ana & Vicente, P. N. (2025). DATA REVOLUTION IN THE RETAIL SECTOR – SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES OF AUTONOMOUS STORE. 8º Encontro Anual de Economia Política.

J. P. Pereira et al.,  "DATA REVOLUTION IN THE RETAIL SECTOR – SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES OF AUTONOMOUS STORE", in 8º Encontro Anual de Economia Política, 2025

@misc{pereira2025_1765136269945,
	author = "Pereira, J. and Viseu, A. and Delicado, Ana and Vicente, P. N.",
	title = "DATA REVOLUTION IN THE RETAIL SECTOR – SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES OF AUTONOMOUS STORE",
	year = "2025",
	url = "https://www.economiapolitica.pt/encontro-2025"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - DATA REVOLUTION IN THE RETAIL SECTOR – SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES OF AUTONOMOUS STORE
T2  - 8º Encontro Anual de Economia Política
AU  - Pereira, J.
AU  - Viseu, A.
AU  - Delicado, Ana
AU  - Vicente, P. N.
PY  - 2025
UR  - https://www.economiapolitica.pt/encontro-2025
AB  - ‘Autonomous stores’ are often characterized in the media as the future of shopping: smart physical
environments augmented through digital technologies (Viseu 2003) that can process data
automatically, seamlessly, and without the need for workers, identifying both consumers and their
actions. References to autonomy and automation conjure a set of imaginaries of technology in the
service of innovation and progress: for consumers these novel environments are purported to mean
gains in convenience, whereby saving time is saving money. For retailers, they mean the possibility
of gathering significant amounts of information on the behaviour of the customers in a store
environment, thus being another manifestation of what Zuboff (2019) calls ‘Surveillance Capitalism’.
Despite being hailed as autonomous, these spaces are vast digital assemblages that rely upon
networked infrastructures composed of people, knowledges, and numerous technological entities
(such as, AI, sensors, algorithms, computer vision, cameras). Portugal is one of the leaders in this
future-making endeavour: in 2019, SENSEI, a Portuguese “unicorn” specialized in the development
of autonomous stores technologies, partnered with SONAE, one of the largest Portuguese retail
chains, to open ‘Continente Labs’ an autonomous store in Lisbon.
This paper draws upon a thematic analysis of data generated from a media analysis of Portuguese
and international newspaper and magazine articles from 2016 until 2023 (which also includes opinion
and paid content). We pay particular attention to the discourses through which they are built: Who is
pushing for them? Why? What are the main issues that are being discussed both in terms of
advantages and problems? Who is included/excluded? And, finally, what futures are being built? This
will then allow us to shed light on the concepts that underlie these spaces – What are “autonomy”
and “smartness” in autonomous stores?
ER  -