Amazon’s looking for different ways to offer faster deliveries
Why Amazon could take another operating loss in Q4 2014 (Part 10 of 12)
Amazon’s looking to test taxis and bike messengers for faster deliveries
In Part 8 of this series, we discussed how sortation centers would help Amazon (AMZN) with its same-day delivery efforts. Amazon is also experimenting with different transportation options for faster deliveries. It recently started testing taxis as delivery vehicles, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
In Part 8, we also discussed how Amazon faced criticism for late delivery of customers’ orders and had to depend on package delivery companies such as United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx (FDX). On December 18, Amazon started a one-hour delivery service with bike messengers.
Amazon’s looking for a competitive edge against retailers
All this shows that Amazon is getting serious about shipping deliveries as soon as possible and getting a competitive edge against the immediacy provided by brick-and-mortar stores. Physical retailers such as Wal-Mart (WMT) and Target (TGT) still dominate the US retail market despite the e-Commerce market growing fast.
According to a report from eMarketer and as the chart above shows, e-Commerce retail sales as a percentage of total retail sales are about 6% right now, while the mobile commerce market constitutes only about 1% of the overall retail market. So there’s huge growth potential in front of Amazon, and it will want to compete with physical retailers. Faster deliveries are one way to do that.
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