admin NEW YORK – For coming Holiday Season this year, Amazon, Walmart and others have promised to deliver more of their orders within 24 hours of customers.
This week will be the first test during the busy holiday shopping season whether they can make that happen, when blitzes of orders and bad weather can lay waste to even the best delivery plans. This is an expensive act that requires not just additional planes and vehicles, but also more workers and amounts of data to help retailers prepare and predict what shoppers may buy.
Six years ago Amazon.com Inc. learned that, when because of bad weather, UPS and FedEx were affected, causing millions of packages to be late for Christmas. Since then, Amazon has been building its own delivery network to give it more control over when and how its packages are delivered. The online shopping giant has leased jets, built package-sorting hubs at airports and launched a program that lets contractors start businesses delivering packages in vans.
Others online enterprises are feeling the pressure to keep up with Amazon. As when 14 years ago, the company introduced two-day shipping, shoppers expected the same from others.
The push for even speedier delivery comes after Amazon announced in April it would cut its delivery for Prime members to one day from two. Walmart and Best Buy announces similar.
But focus will be on Amazon this holiday season and whether it will keep its delivery promises. That’s because according to consulting firm Bain & Co, 42 percent of all online sales this holiday season are expected to go to the Seattle company.
“We deliver for our customers every day and are confident in our ability to serve customers this holiday season,” Amazon said in a statement.
Amazon already had a chance to test out one-day shipping during its Prime Day event in July, which has become one of the company’s busiest shopping events.
It is expected that Amazon will spend about $1.5 billion during the holiday season, partly to move items closer to customers and pay for more worker shifts. It says the cost is worth it, since it’s already seeing customers spend more because of the switch to one-day delivery. Around the country, Amazon has over 100 warehouses to store, pack and ship goods. Walmart is using warehouses and stores near customers to pack next-day orders. Best Buy has opened warehouses near the heavily populated cities of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Target says more than 90 percent of online orders are packed at stores.
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