Grocery stores around the country – and all independent brick-and-mortar retailers, for that matter – uttered a collective gulp the day Amazon announced it had acquired Whole Foods for a whopping $13.7 billion dollars.
Amazon, the Goliath of online shopping and the behemoth responsible for shuttering the doors of retail brick-and-mortar establishments, is getting into the grocery game.
In the same way bookstores and clothing outlets have been asking themselves how they’re going to survive, now the question is, what does this mean for small, independent grocery stores? And more importantly, how are local companies going to be able to compete with the marketing and distribution channels Amazon has in place?
It’s no secret that commerce is increasingly living in the digital domain, with rising shares of retail revenue taking place online over time. Businesses have had to fight tooth and nail to be competitive, stand above the crowd, and be successful.
They need to have an online platform, social media visibility, e-commerce and multi-channel experiences in place in order to thrive in today’s market.
Some try to build their own internal systems, and others rely on third-party software to integrate with their POS system and handle on-demand customer ordering.
While many people seem to believe that brick-and-mortar retail will soon be a thing of the past, tech giants like Amazon are proving that is far from true.
Physical locations will still be part of the business landscape – they just might operate with different purposes.
For Amazon, Whole Foods won’t just be a stand-alone grocer. It will likely be a powerful distribution medium for other parts of their business, such as AmazonFresh