On June 15th of this year, Amazon.com, Inc. put out an offer to buy out the multiple location organic food-based supermarket chain for $13.7 billion dollars. This decision was rumored as far back as April of the same year. Recently, on August 23rd, the Federal Trade Commission approved of the buyout. Amazon announced on the 24th of the same month that the purchase will be final as of the following Monday, which is August 28th. This purchase would give the e-commerce giant over 400 physical locations.
This would not be the first time Amazon has had a brick-and-mortar location. In 2015, Amazon started opening up Amazon Books stores, which are bookstores owned completely owned by them, to sell consumers the latest books, and also showcases the latest Amazon electronics. There are about 10 of these locations currently up and running, with many more, at least 4, coming soon.
Walmart will most likely be affected the most from this acquisition. They have leaded the supermarket game for quite a while now, and they have even already been greatly affected from this. Already, they have tried to make a larger presence with the online market. In an attempt to try to get customers who favors Amazon's choice of free 2 day shipping, they have added a grocery store pickup ability to a majority of their locations.
AmazonFresh is a service which Amazon has had for quite some time now, where you purchase food or other groceries from their respective website, and have it shipped to you. The style of the website is similar to the main Amazon shopping page, but requires a paid membership to the program. This ability, currently, however, is only in selective areas. It is rumored to be available wherever there is a Whole Foods Market location very soon.
Back at the end of 2016, Amazon decided to show us a sneak preview of a project they have been working on called Amazon Go. It is a store designed to have no waiting, lines, and possibly even human workers. A person would simply sign in with their smart device when they walk in, using the Amazon app, then whatever they pick-up would be added to their cart automatically. The type of stuff sold at these locations are very similar to that which Whole Foods already sells. There is a possibility the store chain was bought to test out the Amazon Go-style store.
There are many other different ideas of what Amazon's plans for this chain are. Although it has been confirmed that as of Monday, all of the items at these 400+ locations will be getting a cheaper face lift, so stay tuned in for that. What are your thoughts of the purchase of the chain by our favorite e-commerce company?
