On YOUR MARKS...

摘要

When Amazon makes any kind of announcement, the ripple effect tends to send shudders through executives in at least one of our industry channels. The online giant's latest moves to control the logistics sector at large, coupled with the disclosure to provide Amazon Prime and Prime Business members with free one-day delivery on the majority of orders, are no exception. The news was delivered by Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky during the company's recent Q1 earnings call: 'We're currently working on morphing our Prime, free two-day shipping programme into a free one-day shipping programme. We're able to do this because we've spent 20+ years expanding our fulfilment and logistics network, but this is still a big investment with a lot of work to do ahead of us.' Clearing up any misunderstanding over the myriad of Prime delivery options which already include faster than two-day shipping, Olsavsky said that same-day and Prime Now will be offered on an accelerated basis. However, he added that the initial $800 million investment in Q2 is to enable the free one-day proposition. The CFO also said the company will be building more one-day capacity with its transportation partners throughout the rest of 2019. Amazon has so far refused to be drawn on how many SKUs will be available for this delivery time slot from the outset, but did say the programme will be global. In terms of Amazon Business, its Prime programme is currently only available in the US, Japan and France (although personal Prime membership can be extended to business accounts). Speaking to OPI, a spokesperson for Amazon Business UK confirmed that, as yet, there is no specific timeframe for its launch in the country.