Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

In a recent Investor’s Business Daily article, author Max Cherney outlines how Amazon’s new Prime Now is poised to help the retailer’s Prime loyalty programme “destroy the advantage that Walmart, Target and others hope to gain by offering online orders, in-store pickup and stores as warehouses for online deliveries.” Long considered one of retail’s most effective loyalty programmes with a purported 54 million members, the addition of Prime Now in 26 US markets may put Amazon yet another step ahead of the competition in the multichannel retail wars.

Cherney references a recent Wells Fargo report by analyst Matt Nemer that describes Prime Now as “a move to dominate ‘Need it Now’ shopping. Prime Now, available only to Amazon Prime members in those 26 markets, offers free two-hour shipping on over 30,000 products and one-hour shipping for a $7.99 delivery fee. Money quote from Cherney:

Amazon’s push may eliminate a key advantage of physical retailers — the last-mile convenience of being able to get something immediately. As that advantage disappears, so do other advantages touted by brick-and-mortar stores, such as the ability to pick up an online order quickly at your local store… In the research note, Nemer says that Prime Now, though not currently profitable, helps Amazon retain Prime member loyalty and will, with scale, become profitable.

Wells Fargo isn’t the only analyst bullish on Amazon’s Prime investment. In a recent anal...