Amazon VP Explains the Future of Grocery E-commerce
Mariangela Marseglia joins me on the podcast
The launch of Amazon Now has garnered much attention in the retail world. Why now? What does this tell us about Amazon's grocery strategy? And how else is Amazon innovating in grocery e-commerce?
Hint: it's not *ALL* about speed.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Mariangela Marseglia, Amazon Vice President, European Stores, to explore exactly that on the sidelines of Amazon's "Delivering the Future" event at the Dartford fulfilment centre.
Here's what stayed with me 👇
Yes, the headline is speed. Sub same-day delivery. Groceries in 30 minutes. The kind of convenience that, not long ago, sounded impossible.
They literally delivered a protein bar in India in 4 minutes. 😱
How do they do this?
“By placing products closer to where customers actually live through what we call sub same-day delivery. The sub here matters because we are making same-day even faster. Order it tonight and get it tonight.”
But Mariangela makes the point that speed is becoming the baseline, not the differentiator. Once everyone can deliver fast, "fast" stops being a reason to choose you. You need to continuously delight customers - keep innovating and improving the CX.
Amazon Now gets the headlines - and it is genuinely a gamechanger IMO - but there's a lot of interesting things happening around choice too. For example, consolidating grocery and non-food orders for same-day delivery. That's a differentiator for Amazon and a new way of shopping for UK consumers. Ordering headphones and need some bread and hummus? Go on then.
My take? The next decade of grocery won't be won by whoever is fastest. It'll be won by whoever makes shopping the least amount of work.
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