Markets in Everything: Amazon Same Day Shipping
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE) Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the launch of “Local Express Delivery,” a new shipping option giving customers same-day delivery in seven major cities including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington D.C. The service will be extended to Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix in the coming months.
Thousands of items are now available for Local Express Delivery. Amazon Prime* members pay just $5.99 per item for the service. Full details, including the rate card for all other customers, are available at www.amazon.com/help/shipping.
MP: Goodbye brick-and-mortar stores?
9 Comments:
Wow yet another reason to love Amazon.
Already I save up my change every year and then cash it for amazon gift certificates at coinstar (they dont charge you to do this). Too bad Richmond is too small for such things as same day delivery.
I thought the costs would be more for such quick delivery. This should create a good number of new sales for the company going into the holiday season.
I find this really amusing.
From the time I was a tiny child until our youngest was in school, the normal way of doing things was to look up what you wanted in the catalog (Monkey Wards or just "Wards" in my California grandparents case, Sears Roebuck and later others in my parents and our case) and either ordered it by mail and later telephone for delivery to home or the store, or went down to the store to buy it by catalog number. (My Mississippi grandparents told the store-truck driver what they wanted (if he didn't have it on the truck) and he brought it when he had it.
But MW and Sears and others said there was no money in catalog sales.
Except Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, Chefs, Montana Wheat, Bob's Red Mill, Macho Sauce Productions, .....
While not directly relevant to the same day issue since it does not serve small towns, the catalog re-revolution is hurting small town merchants likely about as much as Wal-Mart. Amazon has large volumes being a national sales presence so they can drive good bargains on goods, and much lower inventory costs relativly than local merchants. Basically it gives folks in small towns the opportunities that used to exist only in large cities.
It doesn't get advertised much, but you can order stuff at Walmart or their on-line site, ditto Ace Hardware, ditto Orchard Supply Hardware, ditto Loews, ditto Menard's, ditto.... and have it delivered to the store. Time depends mostly on how often your store gets a truck from the DC.
Been that way a log time.
Maybe, but why is Webvan the first thing that comes to mind? (Maybe Amazon can also get a corporate welfare subsidy from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.)
As an Amazon Prime member, I get free shipping for two day delivery. Sometimes the two day shipment gets there the next day.
If I recall correctly, Barnes & Noble has (or had) free same-day shipping in Manhattan.
At $5.99 per item, this Amazon deal is astronomically expensive, and I'm not counting the fact that you had to pay for Amazon Prime on top of it.
> MP: Goodbye brick-and-mortar stores?
Nah. People like touching things. And sometimes they want it after the UPS guy has been by today.
This is a *NOW* society. The only way B&M goes away is when it's all done by the pizza delivery guys.
And even there -- it still pays more to buy multiple items in person and save the $6 service charge.
They tried this, sort of, already, with internet-ordered grocery shopping. Doesn't work (and I predicted its utter failure when I heard they were attempting it again 5-10 years ago), because grocery shopping is not just a buying thing, but both a social and a touchy-feeley thing.
When it comes to goods, I often want to feel it and see it, and its competition before I select -- that way I can note shoddy construction, poor fit, cheap, flimsy components and the like, and figure it in. You just can't do that over the internet.
Post a Comment
<< Home