As it continues to integrate its Whole Foods acquisition and deal with pullback in Amazon Fresh, Amazon is reportedly looking to consolidate that service with its Prime Now same-day delivery offering.
Wasting no time incorporating its latest acquisition, Target is rolling out same-day delivery via Shipt from 57 stores covering South Florida and Alabama starting Feb. 1, with plans to rapidly expand the service, making it available nationwide over the next year.
Continuing in perpetual motion mode, Amazon has expanded the number of cities and towns offering free same-day and next-day delivery for Prime members from 5,000 to 8,000, while also leveraging its Best Buy acquisition and new bookstores in an all-out holiday season assault.
In the perpetual game of keep-up with Amazon and Walmart, Target announced plans to acquire delivery service provider Shipt for $550 million, expanding same-day delivery to half of its stores by early 2018 and all major markets by the next holiday season.
While two-thirds of small-to-medium-sized ecommerce companies offer free shipping, only 3% of them are offering same-day or next-day shipping, as the economics don’t work for smaller online merchants, according to a new survey by Shippo.
Amazon has laid the blame for its recent decision to pull Amazon Fresh out of nine states at the feet of the U.S. Postal Service, according to a report in Recode, citing various service issues.
Fearing possible encroachment from Amazon into prescription delivery, CVS will begin offering next-day delivery of both prescriptions and other retail items in major cities in 2018, and same-day service in Manhattan beginning Dec. 4.
Right on the heels of Walmart’s September announcement of an in-home grocery delivery service being tested in New York City, Amazon has come out with its own offering allowing drivers to enter homes and drop off items under the watchful eye of a new Amazon smart connected camera – all tied to Alexa.
Jeff Bezos and the innovation teams at Amazon seem to have cornered the market on far-out ideas that push the envelope for ecommerce distribution, from delivery drones to blimp warehouses to even an undersea DC. That is, until Elon Musk and his hardy band of rocketeers at SpaceX came along and shot the moon – or Mars.
Ahead of the holiday season, FedEx has expanded same-day delivery service to 1,800 cities in 30 regional markets through its FedEx Office division. The deliveries are made by uniformed FedEx drivers in branded vehicles, and the service includes a mobile app to track delivery status including alerts on estimated arrival time.