If the incentive is reducing the chances of being charged by the system for an item they didn't buy, you bet people will put stuff back where they found it.
Like I heard from HEB Central Market employee, that they had a hard time with their bulk self-portion coffee beans, where the price range is quite large yet the beans look pretty identical.
Like most bigger shops, I think amazon will just tolerate the loss without enforcing it too much, if it stays manageable and under enforcement costs, which includes a too negative impact on the general shopping experience.
What about the presence of self checkouts makes theft more likely?
But I'd also have been more impressed with the video if they showed stressed-out parents with crying kids and their hands full as they've got their cell phones tucked between their heads and shoulders, rather than young people quietly grabbing a single item and leaving.
This can actually HELP with those problems because a lot of those problems happen while in a line. Maybe they expect their customers to be like the ones in this video, but certainly my store was a little more chaotic. They should design for that chaos -- and maybe they did, but the video doesn't show it, is all. Presumably because they wanted to stress how easy it was, but to me that comes off as alien to the real world, based on my experience.
It's an 1,800 square foot convenience store in a yuppie area stocked with what appears Whole Foods like take and go food, not a Wal Mart Supercenter. It will be quite a bit different if they open a large store out in the suburbs.
you must assume you're users will do whacky things and they will have no idea how the system works.