The News: Amazon unveiled a new offering, Buy with Prime, that will expand Prime shopping to other online stores beyond Amazon.com. The new offering will be available by invitation for merchants already using Fulfillment by Amazon. It will roll out throughout 2022 as more merchants are invited to participate. Read the full Press Release from Amazon.
Amazon Expands Prime Shopping with Buy with Prime
Analyst Take: Amazon Prime revolutionized online shopping. Free shipping and two-day delivery have become the expected norm for consumers. Buy with Prime is set to revolutionize online shopping yet again. Millions of U.S.-based Prime members will be able to shop from a merchant’s website or e-commerce site and have the same experience that they do on Amazon.com, including free shipping and two-day delivery. Customers will also be able to use the information stored in their Amazon account, whether it’s a payment method or a shipping address, on the merchant’s website for a seamless checkout experience.
Expanding Fulfillment by Amazon
As consumer expectations continue to evolve, this offering will definitely be attractive to retailers. Currently, retailers that use Fulfillment by Amazon, ship their products to Amazon warehouses and allow Amazon to handle the ordering, shipping, and delivery processes. These merchants will be able to add Buy with Prime to their own websites with a few clicks. Amazon logos will be added to product listings to let shoppers know what will be available via Amazon fulfillment.
Merchants will pay a fee for what they use, with the ability to expand or reduce as needed. But the key part with Buy with Amazon, is merchants will receive all of the shopper information. This valuable data can be used for providing better customer service and building and nurturing relationships directly with customers.
Enabling a Future of Experiences
One of the things that I really like about the Buy with Prime offering will be the way its integration will enable sellers to link the highly coveted and trusted “Prime” buying with next generation web experiences. For some items a typical e-commerce experience on the Amazon platform will be enough, but as we move to next generation web 3.0 experience that will be powered by augmented and virtual reality along with other forms of immersion, the desire to create owned commerce sites that integrate with leading logistics capabilities will be prudent. I also see this as a way for Amazon to win new relationships with brands that want to enable customers to shop with Prime, but perhaps seek to use their own logistics and want to maintain control of the users interactive shopper journey.
Leveraging Amazon’s Robust Logistics Network
Amazon has an unmatched logistics network. Last week in a letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company doubled the size of its fulfillment network in the last 24 months. He went on to say that in the early 2000s it would take 18 hours for a product to make its way through a fulfillment center to a delivery truck. Now it only takes an average of 2 hours.
Small to medium-sized businesses have been able to take advantage of this speed and agility, reaching new customers and increasing revenue. Buy with Prime will provide these merchants the opportunity to leverage the logistics network and trust Amazon has already built with Prime members, while cultivating customers and building the same level of trust. This will likely contribute meaningful growth to these businesses and to Amazon overall — a win-win for everyone.
The massive investments that have been made by Amazon over the past several years to drive same and one-day shipping and build itself as the pre-eminent name in not only e-commerce but an end-to-end world class experience that sets the bar for online shopping. This will be paramount to building volume, pushing margins, and driving bottom line growth to make the e-commerce business more profitable in the long run.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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Image Credit: Amazon
The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.
Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.