In late 2013, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos boldly proclaimed on the popular CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” that drones would be delivering orders for its customers within five years. But apparently, the future isn’t now according to a report in the Seattle Times.
Both the U.S. Postal Service and Amazon experienced data glitches that exposed customer information. The USPS may have exposed the personal data of more than 60 million customers, while Amazon told customers their names and email addresses were exposed due to a technical error on its ecommerce site.
On a recent trip to New York, I took the lovely ten-minute stroll from my hotel to Amazon’s newly opened SoHo neighborhood retail store, Amazon 4-star. Let me take a moment to call out some of my own observations and what they could be signaling for the future for Amazon’s brick-and-mortar retail business.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made a rather bold acknowledgement this week, predicting the future demise of his 24-year old juggernaut valued at nearly $1 trillion, when asked in a company meeting about the downfall of Sears. See what else the head of the most disruptive company of our day had to say about business cycles.
It’s not the same without the holiday Toys R Us catalog, but kids everywhere can rest easy because Amazon Claus is coming to town, and to the rescue. Here is what the catalog is expected to look like this holiday season.
As expected, Amazon announced two new headquarters on the East Coast, one in Long Island City, NY and one in Arlington, VA, with plans to invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs. This ended a 14-month process that had 240 U.S. cities selling themselves and offering huge incentives. See details of the two new locations as well as plans for a center of excellence in Nashville.
Grocery giant Kroger is adding voice ordering to its online arsenal, interestingly hitching its wagon to the Google Assistant voice app and not to Amazon’s Echo, at six of its associated brands, the company announced. See what else Kroger is up to as well as other tech skirmishes in the escalating online grocery wars.
Pouring more water into its moat, Amazon has totally eliminated shipping charges this holiday season, removing the $25 threshold for non-Prime members on items ordered in time for Christmas delivery. Amazon is also hiring and managing thousands of seasonal delivery drivers to handle the holiday crush.
While most U.S. consumers still favor free shipping over fast shipping, the figure has dropped from last year, according to a new study from Pitney Bowes, driven by millennials’ greater willingness to pay for expedited delivery.
As waves of legacy retailers close their doors or go bankrupt, countless others are scrambling to build a digital presence with the potential to compete against Amazon. Here is how retailers have a tremendous opportunity to close the Amazon sophistication gap.