The one segment that has proved to be Amazon’s Achilles heel is groceries. The online retail giant has been trying to be a significant player this market for so many years, but has barely made a dent. Now, Amazon has taken a leaf out of Wal-Mart’s play book and announced a new service called AmazonFresh Pickup, where you can order online, reserve a time for the pickup, drive down and collect your groceries.
The company originally launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, and in the last ten years the program has only expanded to a mere of cities across United States. Considering the rate at which it has been growing this unit, it’s clear that things didn’t go according to Amazon’s plan. That ‘something missing’ could be this new initiative that mimics Wal-Mart’s plans.
You can view AmazonFresh Pickup details here.
Wal-Mart has its own grocery pickup service and, according to JoplinGlobe, the company has plans to aggressively expand the program in the United States. What’s more, it has a crucial advantage over Amazon in this space due to the number of physical store locations across the country.
Amazon will have to build its physical stores around the country – something the media has been speculating about for a very long time. As of now, however, the service is limited to Seattle’s SoDo and Ballard neighborhoods, but it’s almost a given that if things work out at these two stores, Amazon will soon start expanding the service to as many neighborhood stores as possible, subject to the limitations of its physical presence.
The United States grocery market is worth more than $600 billion, and there is plenty at stake for companies like Wal-Mart, Kroger and Amazon. The company is not ready to back out of the grocery war, because that is one weak point for the online retailer that traditional brick and mortar stores have already started exploiting.
As with many of Amazon’s experiments, this may not pan out (remember Fire Phone?), but nobody can say they aren’t trying. Even one successful initiative in a hundred attempts is worth the effort, just like AWS was.
Caution: Experiments in Progress – the Amazon Success Formula
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