Amazon takes over the world! That would have been a dramatic headline but it doesn’t seem they’re far off from it. The company swallowed up Whole Foods recently and have begun offering food delivery in select locations. They’ve also started offering in-home delivery even if you’re not home, creepy for some for sure. Now Amazon is looking to take on heavyweights UPS and FedEx in package delivery. According to The Wall Street Journal, the shipping service will be simply called “Shipping with Amazon.”
This new service will be an entire end-to-end shipping service meaning pickups from businesses to customers. According to TechCrunch, the timeframe for service rollout is “soon.” The speculation is that this will roll out in just a matter of weeks with Los Angeles being the first to see it. After the Los Angeles roll out the program will expand to other locations by next year.
Of course, it makes sense that Amazon would extend its service to third-party merchants working on its ecommerce platform, but the report goes further, saying Amazon would eventually like to offer shipping services to basically any other business, too – with the goal of undercutting both UPS and FedEx on rates.
This should not be surprising to anyone following Amazon’s moves on the logistics front – the retail giant has its own fleet of cargo jets, its own warehouses, its own last-mile contract couriers and can even act as an ocean shipping agent, just like both FedEx and UPS. It’s been reported for a while now that Amazon would eventually compete directly with its longstanding delivery partners.
This is a bold move and shows just how much the company wants to integrate itself into consumers daily life. It will be interesting to see how consumers take to the idea of Amazon as a courier of products that aren’t always from Amazon.
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[button link=”https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/09/amazon-said-to-launch-delivery-service-to-compete-with-ups-and-fedex/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: TechCrunch[/button]
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