Dive Brief:

• Amazon on Tuesday announced that it has given its voice assistant, Alexa, the new capability of ordering for its Prime Now program, which provides free two-hour delivery on thousands of items in select cities, according to a company press release.

• Using the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, Fire Tablet, and Fire TV,  shoppers can say “Alexa, order [product] from Prime Now” and Alexa will recommend a product within the Prime Now catalog and, once confirmed, will add it to the order. Once the minimum order amount is reached, Alexa will automatically choose the next available 2-hour delivery slot. 

• Alexa voice shopping through Prime Now is available in more than 30 Prime Now eligible cities. To shop with Alexa through Prime Now, customers must be Prime members with a default payment and shipping address. In certain areas in Seattle, Columbus, OH, and Cincinnati, OH, alcohol deliveries are also available; customers must be 21 or older to Alexa voice shop for alcohol through Prime Now and must show their ID upon delivery.

Dive Insight:

Amazon first launched Prime Now in December 2014 and has since expanded it to more than 30 metropolitan areas in the U.S. Two-hour delivery is free to Prime members in those areas, and one-hour delivery is an option for $8 or so. Beefing up its Prime Now program is a way to make its Prime program more valuable to members and leverage shoppers’ needs for consumer goods, which Cowen & Co. last year said could to be an important driver for the e-commerce giant.

A quarter of Amazon Prime members take advantage of the retailer’s Prime Now two-hour delivery option on more than 10,000 products, according to a survey from Cowen & Co. released last year. Cowen polled 1,250 U.S. adults (over 18 years old) and said that 25% of Amazon’s Prime members used the Prime Now service in January last year and that 66% were between 25 and 44 years old.

A majority (70%) used Prime Now delivery more than once per month and 24% used it at least once per week. A majority (60%) also used Prime Now for “media”: 47% bought electronics valued under $50, 44% bought personal care products, 41% bought apparel, shoes, and accessories. A bit more than a quarter (26%) ordered items from smaller local grocery stores.

At first glance, Amazon Prime Now (as with the many other same-day and even speedier delivery services) would seem to be an expensive way to ship orders. But, as Paula Rosenblum, co-founder and Managing Partner at RSR Research, pointed out last year, Amazon has taken a variety of steps to keep costs down. For one thing, even the $8 one-hour delivery fee competes with two-day delivery costs (at least in customers’ minds, considering that Amazon and other retailers have deals with shippers), and Amazon encourages customers to add a tip to their Prime Now deliveries. Plus, packaging doesn’t have to be as secure as when it goes through the mail. Amazon has limited the number of items available for Prime Now delivery so far.

Enlisting Alexa to place orders reduces friction even further for Prime customers that enjoy the Prime Now benefit. “Bringing Prime Now to Alexa voice shopping combines two of the most innovative shopping technologies available for an experience that our customers are going to wonder how they ever lived without,” Assaf Ronen, vice president of Voice Shopping, said in a statement.