The USPS announced plans to expand its early-morning package delivery service pilot for 2 years in San Francisco. Currently, the USPS delivers Amazon Fresh totes to consumers’ homes during a 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. delivery window. The approved pilot would allow these operations to continue, and open up the pilot to additional retailers and…
Archives for ecommerce
Google Express Pilots Fresh Deliveries and Subscriptions
Google Express has shortened its name, but broadened its services. Formerly known as Google Shopping Express, Google’s same-day delivery service announced expansion to Boston, Chicago, and Washington D.C., in addition to its previous service areas of the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and NYC. The service is now available for subscription, offering unlimited deliveries of orders…
Whole Foods Promotes Instacart Partnership
In a lighthearted video, Whole Foods and Instacart extol the benefits of their new partnership. Want hard to find products or want to send groceries to your favorite college student? The service has you covered with rapid delivery. As detailed in our previous post, Whole Foods now offers online ordering and delivery via Instacart in…
Amazon Drops Price of Fire Phone to 99 Cents
Amazon drastically cut the price of its 32-bit Fire Phone to $0.99 from $199, in an attempt to increase the Fire Phone’s mediocre sales, only a few months after the phone’s debut. The price cut come strategically a few days before Apple’s announcement of a new iPhone and a new mobile payments system, Apple Pay….
Whole Foods Partners with Instacart
Whole Foods announces a new partnership with grocery delivery start-up Instacart, to deliver groceries from their stores directly to their customers’ homes. The service will be immediately available in the 15 U.S. cities where Instacart already operates, and the two companies are also testing an in-store pickup service in select stores in Boston and Austin….
Amazon is 20 Years Old. What will the next 25 years bring?
Amazon’s stock price goes up as its margins decline. Will investors continue to believe? Will the ever fickle Millennials stick with Amazon or will it become “where grannies shop” mimicking the trend of Facebook which has lost favor with Millenials. Will the burden of all of the infrastructure Amazon is putting in to support same-day…
Multi-Channel Moves In House
When eCommerce first gained a lot of volume, retailers built dedicated warehouses to ship orders. This process resulted in the creation of two inventory pools, one for online, and one for in-store. Often these two inventory pools are separated by a firewall, and cannot communicate. This makes for a frustrating experience as a shopper; how…
Location, location, location, in E-commerce
E-commerce opens an exciting world of new possibilites, new knowledge, and new products. Thanks to the internet, people now want (and can get) incredibly diverse and random items, reflecting their individual taste preferences. Or do they? In a recently released book by Wharton professor David Bell, titled “Why Location is (Still) Everything, e-commerce is revealed to have changed surprisingly little…
Uber Breaks Out Same-Day Delivery Service
Uber flexes its startup muscle and announces a new same-day delivery service called Uber Corner Store available only in certain parts of Washington D.C. The announcement comes just a few months after Uber launched UberRUSH, a courier delivery system in Manhattan where customers can have items be picked up and dropped off at a specific address by Uber…
eCommerce Heats up In India: Flipkart v. Amazon
Flipkart, hot off raising $1 Billion in its second funding round has gained the attention of retailing behemoth Amazon. Shortly after Flipkart’s achievement, Amazon announced it would invest $2 Billion to expand business in India, building five new warehouses. Jeff Bezos commented on the investment, saying Amazon sees “huge potential in the Indian economy and…