Regardless of the size of your business and its corresponding methods of retail, you will inevitably, or may have already felt the impact of the Amazon Effect.
While this consistent and straining variable is in no way the retail boogeyman it is made out to be — coming to put you out of business and steal all of your clients — one still has to take a step back and assess exactly how the largest player in eCommerce is impacting the shopping patterns of your clients. While many businesses are putting their chips in with the large-scale courier services to try and balance out the modern landscape of retail delivery, these services, much like Amazon itself, are riddled with markups and hidden fees.
The scramble to dive headfirst into any courier service without doing additional research is just one of the many byproducts of the Amazon Effect. So how does one avoid these pitfalls while being aware of how the Amazon Effect is shaping the modern retail landscape? Well as you would combat any invasive variable, research and preparedness go a long way.
The Symptoms
If we pull back a little bit and take a look at the world of eCommerce as well as same-day delivery and retail as a whole, we can get a sensation of what the Amazon Effect is and how it plays out in the current landscape. The symptoms initially present themselves as brick and mortar locations feeling pressured to play catch up with the industry giant. All done in order to match the needs of their customers, as comfort — regardless of any hidden downsides — will always take priority in the eyes of the consumer.
This is essentially showcased by the wounds inflicted on small-scale businesses, local enterprises or even bigger players that don’t have the kind of reach that Amazon has. This results in customers taking their business to the industry juggernaut and spending their money as far away from local enterprises as possible. The symptoms of this retail affliction only grow worse as these impacted businesses continue to stay locked into the brick-and-mortar practice. Resulting in only one fixed revenue stream, and one that is solely based on who walks through the door and the frequency in which that happens.
Diagnosis
When you are a business operator and your only revenue stream is based on your physical location, how will you know the Amazon Effect is starting to impact your business? Well, it may start small but you will start to notice rather quickly how modern shoppers form their habits based on what is available and at what kind of convenience to them.
Let’s say you just opened a new small-scale brick and mortar location, business is going well and you have some honeymoon shoppers who are caught up in the momentum of a new player on the block. Any enterprise knows that after a few weeks, this rush will dissipate and you will either have to either stabilize or adapt your business model. Whereas in the era before the eCommerce boom, your only primary cause for concern would be rival businesses showing up on your block, nowadays it’s the looming shadow of large-scale online retailers who have cornered the market.
So, you have established a business and you are noticing things are slowing down a bit, as time goes on, you’ll start to notice certain demands pop up from your customers, and one of the most common if not the most common request will be surrounding delivery services, online implementations and the ability to rapidly order products within your inventory.
Understanding the Spread
Like any affliction, understanding how it spreads is the fastest way to combat it. The most common way the Amazon Effect keeps its momentum is solely based on the fact that online applications, not just shopping, show no signs of slowing down. This gives large-scale eCommerce entities an inherently unfair advantage, as they simply ride the wave of cultural change and continue to grow with little effort.
As a byproduct of Amazon’s online shopping portals, consumers don’t just crave convenience, they also crave variety and lots of it. This is something that small-scale retailers can’t keep up with, as most mom and pop shops, don’t have acres worth of warehouse space attached to them. This consumer behaviour has now built itself into online discourse, as any product Amazon showcases in its repertoire, modern consumers can quickly read up on and also compare consumer reviews. Diluting the shopping process into a few seconds and finishing it off by simply clicking ‘add to cart.’
Another major variable in how the Amazon Effect has spread so rapidly is the online implementation of A.I.
How this process operates is by having an entire system dedicated to data storage and monitoring customer shopping patterns. We’ve all seen it in our day-to-day, you buy a rubber duck, then all of a sudden you’re getting advertisements for bath installments and showerheads. This process further adds to the unfair disruption of small-scale retailers — as entire independent self-regulating functions now exist that give them little to no fighting chance.
The Antidote
However, not all is bleak in the face of the Amazon Effect, as hyper-local shopping has been thriving like never before. Whether this is a result of a long-overdue backlash to the Amazon Effect itself or a byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact of the matter is, that there is a large chunk of local shoppers who still want to give their neighbourhood business’s an edge in the face of the online juggernaut.
So why is this emerging, and more importantly, staying its course? This could simply be a direct result of the fact that local businesses on average make a more refined product and that for the most part, take pride in their work on a level that online retailers simply do not. Additionally, this can be a result of cultural influences around a specific retail location, such as a loyal network of regulars or the fact that said location has been a neighbourhood institution for a number of years.
Regardless of how the fact of the matter is that local retailers still have fighting odds against something such as the all-encompassing Amazon Effect.
Same-Day Delivery: Your Own Natural Immunity
This is where we come in, as an independent same-day delivery service, we work in tandem with your business and more importantly, its impact in your area.
We guarantee this through our same-day promise (something often touted by giants like Amazon) while also incorporating a flat-rate delivery system. This is built from the ground up to work for you as a local retailer, as there is no chance that any markups or hidden fees will occur. We want you to thrive in the face of the Amazon Effect and we will work tirelessly to make sure that you do.
On top of this, we also offer order tracking, meaning you get real-time location services on where your deliveries are going and the timeline in which they are going to arrive. Not only that, but we also monitor and track your inventory, so you can see what is in high demand, what needs restocking and who amongst your clientele often relies on it.
The Amazon Effect isn’t going anywhere any time soon, however, services like ours are ready to give you a fighting chance against the industry juggernaut and its overwhelming impact on the everchanging landscape of modern retail requirements.
