Amazon Angling For Same-Day Delivery Beyond Groceries 193
New submitter lipanitech writes with an except from an interesting look at the upcoming reality of same-day delivery for many customers within reach of the Amazon delivery supply chain: "The vision goes well beyond just groceries. Groceries are a Trojan Horse. The dirty secret of Amazon is that it really doesn't distinguish between a head of lettuce and a big screen TV. If Amazon can pull off same-day grocery delivery in NYC, it ostensibly means consumers can order anything online and receive it the same day. By logical extension, that means Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is on the cusp of rendering every retailer on earth obsolete." While I'm happy to order dry goods like electronics online, I've always been skeptical of other people picking out my groceries. On the other hand, I must admit that (at least in its Seattle delivery area) Amazon Fresh does an impressive job of delivering decent produce.
Town centers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we have to worry about the vitality of town centers as Amazon and other online merchants continue to take away their business. They've already been battered by Wal-Mart and other big box stores, but this could be the finishing blow.
*NOT* feeling sorry for merchants here, but this is a quality of life issue. Do we want the country turned into one deep suburb where everyone orders what they want from their living room couch?
Maybe they deserve it (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, I don't want an Amazon monopoly of all of retail any more than the next guy, but maybe these brick-and-mortar chains deserve it. So much of the retail space has been taken over by large corporations that offer better prices than mom-and-pop stores but lack any semblance of customer service. Their employees aren't trained, and the products are exactly the same junk you find everywhere else. They just aren't a good experience.
I especially hate how they have resisted integrating with the online world. It drives me nuts when a company has both a large online presence and a brick-and-mortar presence. Even though they share the same branding and (usually) the same product selection, they function as if they are separate companies. If you have a problem and try to talk to a person at your local store, they say "we don't deal with the online stuff, they are independent from us." Well great, way to give up your ONE advantage over Amazon.
Give the customer what they want. They want the convenience of online shopping. They also want face-to-face sometimes. They blew it. Amazon's same day deliver will be close enough to bury them.
Re:Town centers (Score:4, Interesting)
Before urbanization, we used to order much of what we bought from catalogs. You could order everything from shoelaces to a prefab house kit from the Sears Catalog, and if you lived in a rural place, you pretty much had to mail-order.
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I like some retail shopping, but sometimes it's really annoying, and I think there's plenty of good in a mail-order or internet-order catalog to make up for the negatives.
This so very much! The internetZ have just become the catalog of the 21st century.
Brick and mortar stores have some great advantages, but they have gotten so far from where they should be that it isn't worth the effort to attempt to shop there.
Example:
I wanted some simple hardware parts. I check my local Lowe's. Well, it turns out that these inexpensive parts don't have much of a profit margin, so they don't carry them. But they do have a thousand 5 gallon buckets of Contractor grade (cheap) wall paint. After 10 or 11 trips, I cross them off my source list. So it's online ordering for that stuff.
Example:
I need some computer parts. A stereo capable external sound card. Not exactly everyday stuff, but not exactly a SCSI hard drive and adapter either.
Stop off at best Buy and other folks that sell this kind of thing. No luck. Anything other than 50 varieties of Windows 8 running computers/laptops, they don't have much at all. And any peripherals are so overpriced - 30 dollars for a 6 foot cat5 cable is a sin. After about the 10th time, I give up checking them out, also.
How does this happen? If they have the stuff, it's likely to cost 4 to 5 times what I can get it for online. If they have it. But odds are tehy won't, because in their world, you don't have items that are low profit margin, or the least bit obscure.
Well, these big box retailers have an army of accountants and headquarters middle managers to support, so their overhead structure depends on a lot of sales and a lot of profit. And since accountants are notoriously difficult to purge from a company, they cut back on store staff if they can. But still, that Cat5 Cable or left handed widget is supporting the store employees the store overhead, and an army of people at HQ.
And the really sad part is that the accounts who are telling these folks how to run their operations don't see the little stuff as important. After all, they might only make a buck on that left handed widget, and that valuable store space can be used for a higher profit item. But they fail in that eventually. Accountants know numbers, but they largly do not understand people. I don't waste my time going there because tehy won't have what I need, and I can save time and money ordering online. How much money do I spend in a store if I don't go to that store. They have become irrelevant.
Re:Fresh Direct (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, I guess delivered groceries do well for people that don't cook, and no reheating something in the microwave or boiling in a bag does not count for cooking.
But I like to cook from scratch whenever possible. I'd not feel confident that someone picking out produce, or seafood or meat would pick out the best looking selections, but instead would be looking more to rotate stock so that oldest is going out.
I like to pick up, squeeze, look at and smell my ingredients and get the best I can find for myself.
But I've noticed that so many folks today in the US, just don't seem to know how to cook anymore. Hell, I've not dated a woman in awhile that knew how to cook even, I've had to show several girlfriends how to prep and do food.
Although I think it is changing back a bit and people are more interested in the foods they eat and fix home cooked meals, we have a long way to go on that front.
But no thanks...I'll get my own groceries. I get the best deals that way. I look on Wed. to see what's going to be on sale at the various grocery stores, and plan my route on the weekend to hit 2-3 of them to get the sale items, and I build some of my weekly cooking around that. I eat quite well and don't spend all that much as others do with pre-packaged, processed crap food.