Why Should Amazon Sellers Care About Grocery?
Paige Schueth
Over the last 5 months I’ve written about only two industries that Amazon isn’t currently the clear winner in; home furniture and groceries.
It turns out that during COVID people really like the idea of curbside pickup and ordering their groceries online.
Given Walmart’s 4700 US based stores it makes sense they pulled ahead in the grocery race.
There hasn’t been much news lately about Amazon and their response to this until last week when they launched Amazon Fresh in Woodland Hills, California
Determined to not lose a customer’s entire retail spend by way of grocery delivery they are experimenting with all kinds of value add options in Amazon Fresh.
1. No checkout lines.
They invented what’s called a “dash cart” that will allow you to walk out of the store and be charged automatically.
2. Your shopping lists are snyc’d to the cart.
Not only will every Amazon Fresh have Alexa kiosks to help you find something you’re looking for, you can upload your shopping list from the app to the cart and it will take help you navigate the aisles.
3. Seamless In-store and online experience.
Believe it or not, you can now also drive up to an Amazon fresh, have your groceries loaded in and return something you bought on Amazon.com that’s not even in a package.
Obviously there is the one huge obstacle of actually building out these physical locations, even if they converted all 500 whole foods stores this still pales in comparieson to Walmart’s offline presence.
That being said the ability for them to seamlessly integrate your shopping experience from online to offline is incredible.
I can imagine scenarios where you can route your packages to your grocery store for free same day shipping…
Or even more impactful, the recommendation engine knowing what you have in your cart or what’s on your shopping list and suggesting non-grocery items to pick up while you’re out.
For example, home and kitchen is the third most popular category on the marketplace and the single most popular category for third-party sellers. Owning the first spot in that recommendation engine or having a brand that people ask for by name will only continue to be more important as consumers continue to shift online.
Paige Schueth
Growth Marketer
