Amazon has decided to further extend the range of products it stocks and is now trialling selling food and drink.
Amazon’s Grocery section, which is currently in “beta” (which means it is liable to change quite a bit whilst they test out its functionality), is stocking over 22,000 items of food, drink and , all with free delivery and no minimum purchase.
Amazon.co.uk’s aim is to be the place where customers can find and discover any product they want to buy online, and with the introduction of this new store there are thousands of household, niche, ethnic and international grocery items, all available at the click of a button,” said James Leeson, director of Grocery at Amazon.co.uk Ltd. “With unlimited virtual shelf space, customers can choose from a wide variety of products, all of which benefit from free delivery. We will work tirelessly to increase the selection of grocery items available to be delivered directly to customers’ doors.”
As well as accessing the site from the comfort of your own home, Amazon also has a good mobile website, so you can shop for groceries on your phone, and there’s also a dedicated iPhone app, so you could do your weekly big shop whilst sitting on the train.
There are a few drawbacks though. Some items can only be purchased in bulk. For example, standard size Walkers crisps only come in packs of 48. Also, you cannot specify a delivery time as you can with the other big supermarket delivery services, which isn’t ideal.
As it’s a beta site, there are likely to be a lot of changes to the service, so it will be interesting to see what Amazon do with their Grocery service. They certainly have a lot of experience in selling a whole range of other items, but will this knowledge transfer to food and drink?
How long until we see the inevitable cross-sell messages like “customers who purchased this beer also purchased these snacks…”?
The bigger delivery services such as Tesco, ASDA and Ocado will no doubt be looking on with interest. Tesco and ASDA will certainly have enough resources behind them to withstand the might of Amazon, but Ocado is a different story.
Will you be trying to buy groceries from Amazon? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.