Your new post is loading...
by J.J. McCorvey
"As Amazon evolves into a same-day delivery service, its active transportation fleet could become yet another competitive advantage. By supplementing its long-term relationships with UPS and FedEx with its own Fresh trucks, Amazon may well be able to deliver faster than retailers that depend entirely on outside services. "Pretty soon, if you're a retailer with your online business, you're going to be faced with a choice," says Brian Walker, a former analyst at Forrester Research who is now with Hybris, a provider of e-commerce software. "You're not going to be able to match Amazon, so you're going to have to consider partnering with them and leveraging their network."
"This shift could even turn Amazon into a competitor to UPS and FedEx, the long-standing duopoly of next-day U.S. shipping. "If Amazon could do it at enough scale, they could offer shipping at a great value and still eke out some margin," says Walker. "In classic Amazon fashion, they could leverage the infrastructure they've built for themselves, take a disruptive approach to the pricing, and run it as an efficiency play."
See my comment on the related story about Bezos and his purchase of the Washington Post, adjacent to this Scoop.