Amazon today announced it’ll extend Amazon Fresh, its grocery-delivery service to San Francisco. This will allow San Francisco residents to purchase and receive fresh fruit, milk, and other items on their doorsteps. 

 

Amazon now boasts a product line of 500,000 fresh goods compared to 100,000 this summer. To accomodate the strong demand for its offerings, Amazon will offer same-day delivery for $8.99, plus $0.99 per item with roughly 1 to 3-hour windows. Orders over $35 on the other hand will receive free same-day shipping. And with the Prime Fresh membership, which is a $299-per-year membership that combines grocery delivery with the regular Prime 2-day shipping service, Amazon will deliver to its members for free all year long.

 

This is another tactic that Amazon is using to eliminate other online retailers. By expanding its service to fresh goods and same-day delivery for grocery products, Amazon is essentially removing the need for other online stores. With an Amazon account, consumers can essentially purchase everything they need ranging from books, electronics, and now food. Additionally, shoppers can receive their orders on the same day they purchased them. This is certainly a wakeup call for other retailers that are not offering same-day delivery services. Without such offering, these online merchants will not be able to compete with large corporations such as Amazon and eBay as they have all the products and services required to capture consumers’ mind shares and more importantly, their wallets. As mentioned in our previous article, “Why Same-Day Delivery is the Future of Ecommerce,” competition will slowly but surely emerge the demand for same-day delivery. Online retailers that can’t offer such offering will lose their customers to companies that offer such service as customers will most likely purchase from retailers that not only offer products they want, but also services that astonish them.