Amazon has plans to open up a number of Whole Foods stores to make their two-hour delivery service even more accessible to customers. The expansion will bring forth Whole Foods to suburban and rural regions,which it has been adding customers into since it was acquired by Amazon in the year 2017. In the Rocky Mountain Region, a person familiar with the plans said that the employees of Whole Foods have paid a visit to possible retail spaces in certain parts of Idaho, the southern part of Utah and also Wyoming. Currently, the grocer does not have stores in these regions.
Amazon offers Prime Now, which is two-hour delivery service to Prime members. This serves up more than 60 cities across the US along with online grocery pickup from Whole Foods in almost 30 cities. The company also plans to expand these services to close to all of their 475 Whole Foods stores. They also intend to use the benefits for Prime members in order to attract new customers to Whole Foods and thus draw them back more often. The expansion of Whole Foods by Amazon in a planned manner clearly shows that the e-commerce giant does not have plans to slow down their push into the physical retail segment.
The company is also making their move into the physical world by opening up spaces in malls, shopping districts and also some local strip malls. This only goes to show that there is an increase in the intensity for Amazon to get themselves involved in this business segment. Their latest move is the Amazon 4-star store. Now, it is located in New York City, Berkeley, California and Lone Tree in Colorado. To go with the 4-Star, they have been expanding their stores of Amazon Books and Amazon Go. One possible reason for this could well be that the company is noticing a rise in online sales in certain regions, which have the presence of Amazon stores. Moreover, there are brick and motor stores, which help to increase the customer awareness of the brand. They also turn out to provide the extra incentive for Amazon to go ahead with their plan.
