Are Unmanned Stores Ready? Exploring the 5 Levels of Retail Automation

After July, extreme heat sparked jokes online, while another hot topic was "unmanned stores".

Unmanned stores: how many levels are there?

Early July, Alibaba's unmanned supermarket "Tao Coffee" opened in Hangzhou, attracting much attention.

Dairy giant Yili plans to launch unmanned convenience micro‑stores in more than 2,000 communities.

Retail giant Suning’s unmanned store will open in August in Nanjing and be replicated in many cities.

At the same time, a Shanghai "Bingo Box" unmanned convenience store shut down due to extreme heat.

Is the unmanned store a genuine commercial trend or just hype? Is the technology mature? Reporter interviewed Suning Cloud Commerce IT Vice President and head of Suning Technology Research Institute, Xiang Jiangxu.

According to Xiang, unmanned stores can be classified into five levels (L0‑L4), similar to autonomous driving. Level 0 is a traditional staffed store. Level 1 covers simple vending‑machine‑type automation. Level 2, exemplified by Tao Coffee, automates consumer‑facing processes such as shopping and checkout using image recognition and IoT, but still has limitations. Level 3 represents advanced stores like Amazon Go and Take‑Go, where all consumer‑facing steps are automated, though constraints such as store size and product variety remain. Level 4 is a theoretical fully autonomous store with no conditions limiting operation.

Suning’s upcoming unmanned store, scheduled to open in August, will use facial recognition and seamless payment through Suning Finance, offering a completely perception‑free shopping experience that surpasses typical L2 stores.

Xiang believes unmanned stores will not replace all brick‑and‑mortar shops but will serve specific categories, locations, and customer groups, often delivering service equal to or better than staffed stores. He hopes the level‑based classification will become an industry reference as Suning expands unmanned stores across different tiers.