Amazon To Eventually Open As Many As 2000 Grocery Stores

Amazon customer service will look into the claim, quickly determine that the package hasn’t arrived and, in most cases, automatically offer a free month of Amazon Prime service.

The quarterly results contrast the near-term interests of Wall Street with the long-term outlook of Amazon’s founder, who, in addition to the company’s history of taking the long view has been investing his personal wealth in space exploration with a goal of helping millions of people live and work in space. Analysts had expected Amazon to report $32.69 billion in revenue and EPS of 78 cents. But, operating expenses rose the same percent to $32.1 billion. While both those figures are way up from past year – with sales up 29 percent and income more than tripling – the profit figure came in far below analyst expectations of 79 cents a share.

Shares of Amazon closed Thursday at $818.36, with a consensus analyst price target of $920.02 and a 52-week trading range of $474.00 to $847.21. Amazon sources the groceries from offline stores such as Big Bazaar, Nature’s Basket, Reliance Fresh and In and Out.

Certainly, more Americans are turning to Amazon for groceries: While Amazon accounts for less than 1% of total USA grocery sales, a recent survey from financial services firm Cowen & Co. found that 18% more people shopped for groceries and other consumable goods on Amazon in the first quarter of 2016 than did in the year-ago period.

The Amazon Echo smart speaker and its Alexa voice assistant are among Amazon’s latest big investments.

The strong performance of the company’s cloud services business, Amazon Web Services, also bodes well for the future, analysts said, with Deutsche Bank saying it “represented the most important piece of the bull case”. This strategy isn’t new.

Two weeks ago the e-retailer added a series of paid tiers to its streaming music service.

Amazon said in July that customers placed 60 per cent more orders worldwide in its second Prime Day sale.

Just four months into its launch, Amazon Prime has become the highest-selling product for the Seattle-headquartered e-commerce company in India.

Despite its steep shipping costs, Prime has helped Amazon ramp up its sales and grow its rolls of repeat customers. So when those departments under-perform, for any multitude of reasons, it could force Amazon’s stock to take a hit.

Given that Amazon’s official policy only allows for customer service representatives to offer a freebie on the first Amazon Prime shipment, the company might be less willing to offer a deal if delays start to pile up.

“If you become a Prime member you buy more from us”, he said at a luncheon in NY on Thursday. But Amazon is trying to drive down those costs and better manage its volume through using its own logistics network and the U.S. Postal Service for more deliveries, he said.