That means the company will lose out on impulse purchases from shoppers passing by the location, or from those who simply prefer to select their produce themselves. Economically, it's much more efficient for Wal-Mart and Kroger to provide such a service since they only need to build a kiosk in a store parking lot at one of their thousands of stores.Ĭuriously, Amazon's new pickup locations don't also offer customers the option of coming into the store, as most grocery shoppers still do. Without its own consumer-facing real estate like Wal-Mart and Kroger have, Amazon needs to find and convert space to open more pickup centers, a time-consuming, expensive, and difficult task. If Amazon wants to truly compete with them, it would need to open hundreds of its own locations across the country.

The company is at a number of disadvantages as it opens another front in the grocery industry.įirst, Wal-Mart and Kroger have a clear head start with hundreds of kiosks already up and running.

With its Prime membership program and e-commerce scale, Amazon usually operates from a position of strength, but that isn't the case here.

Amazon fresh pickup