Amazon has taken a bold step to open a physical grocery store where a consumer can come in and pick what they want themselves. Before then, all companies do online shopping where you can buy online. Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus that resulted in total lockdown in all countries.
However, Amazon feels it is best it opens physical stores. The reason is that it believes that physical stores will be an important part of how consumers shop. In the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills, the e-commerce giant today opened its first Amazon Fresh supermarket. The very first of the seven Amazon Fresh that it is planning on opening in California and Illinois in the coming weeks and months.
A blog post from the head of Amazon Fresh, James Helbling states that the stores will open to start with invitation-only. Based emails it will be passing out to locals, from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm. PT. It will upgrade more on opening hours and capacity overtime here.
The store in LA is to target a different customer
You might be wondering why Amazon choose to open another store when it already has Whole Foods and smaller Amazon Go Stores?. The main point here will be to construct a new grocery store experience from scratch focusing on exceptional customers. As a matter of fact, this is parity for the course with all packaged goods plays of consumers – possess a very large array of brands focusing on every demographics, and you will get the space.
It is also an important part of the playbook for Amazon in its larger bid. To compete more fully in opposition to the likes of Walmart, which rules the world of physical (and hence, every) shopping in the United States. Walmart was evaluated to have close to a 26% market share of grocery sales in the United States. In what is still slightly a disorganized market, following the graphic from Statists. The data place Amazon’s Whole Foods share at just 1.6 percent. Whereas Amazon evaluates that is close to about 4 percent, not excluding its other channels, including online. Though, still quite small.
Amazon Fresh will introduce a lot of recognized, mainstream big brands
While Whole Foods is mainly focused on organic and healthy foods. (and has literally gained the nickname “Whole Paycheck”, because of how costly a shopping trip can be over there.). Go is more little and all about catering to early users. With its no-human, all-automation, AI, and camera approach. Amazon Fresh will introduce a whole lot of recognized, mainstream big brands. Together with Amazon’s own increasing own-label lines, along with so many ready-made items.
That is not to say it won’t also be very tech-heavy. The store will include a new feature known as the “Amazon Dash Cart”. In order for people to create a list of items before entering the store. And then use it to choose and pay for things to stop waiting time to ring up and pay using a human cashier.
There will also be Echo Show devices placed around the store to give advice to people on where they can find products. (Though, I don’t think that fully operate devices will be available. That is, no ability to next the music playing in the store via these…. not yet at the moment.)
Amazon says it will grant free delivery
It will as well grant free delivery to those that shop at the store, which basically will become a warehouse of variety for the larger Amazon Fresh operation.
By developing the whole store from the ground up, it will give Amazon to merge or combine so many techs into the experience more comfortably, too.
The coming, spread, and lasting existence of the novel coronavirus have played out in a funny way when talking about physical stores. Depending on where you reside, you will get so many sets of regulations to abide by when shopping. This might range from wearing a face mask or reducing the number of entry or movement around the stores. Through the stores working with other restrictions and in some cases not even opened at all.
Amazon plans to set its own guidelines.
Amazon planning on setting up and taking its own guidelines into how the stores will basically operate. Basing it on howWhole Foods has been operating. Employees will have daily temperature checks: and both consumers and those working in the stores will wear face masks. It will give free disposable masks to those who need them and stores will only allow a 50 percent maximum capacity.
The opening of the store in Los Angeles
The opening of the store in Los Angeles shouldn’t be a surprise to those who have been following the moves of the company. It has been taking up big retail locations bit by bit to build them into Fresh depots for some while now. The sites in Los Angeles are not excluded. However many other signals including hiring patterns have made many to assume that the bigger plan was to develop them into retail operations.
Amazon also plans on building stores outside the US
Amazon also said it is planning to build physical grocery stores in other markets outside the United States ad well. Rumors had it that the United States has a little disorganized and a bit lousy grocery industry. This grocery industry was influenced in its case by Tesco. That Amazon has been surveying retail locations that have come up for sale. As big retail chains have found themselves in financial awful straights.
That dilemma, absurdly, has been partly the result of the shift to people shopping online, on sites like (you pressured it) Amazon.
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