Dive Brief:
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Amazon has announced that its “Get it Today” same-day delivery service has expanded to six more cities, making a total of 10.
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For $5.99, Amazon Prime members can receive any number of items in one day if they place their order by noon. Prime membership costs $99 a year.
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Not all products sold on Amazon are available through the program, which is now available in Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Baltimore, Dallas, Indianapolis, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
Dive Insight:
This is the kind of Amazonian move that makes rival retailers nervous. One of the advantages of brick-and-mortar stores is the convenience of getting what you want or need the day you walk into a store; same-day delivery mutes that advantage.
Still, it doesn’t deliver the experience of walking into the store in the first place. If shopping and browsing in real stores in real time hold any allure, retailers still have some advantage, as long as their stores provide a good customer experience. An issue on Amazon’s part is paying for the service. If it costs more than $5.99 per delivery to make this program happen, the retail giant is back to its old methods of losing money to win.
