Electric Business Fantasy: A few hours at home to the store moved to the door

Lead: American Electronic magazine "Slate" Wednesday published a signed Fahad Manyo (Farhad Manjoo) article said that the day service and fresh electricity, the combination of people's entire shopping model will be a huge change, this impact is no less than Amazon's impact on the book industry. With these services, when you need to buy any goods, not only can not leave the house, but only a few hours, there will be someone door-to-door, like all the shops have moved to the door.

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On-Day service

A few days ago, my toilet paper ran out. You should not be unfamiliar with this: the last roll of paper in my home begins to count down, and you may need to go to the store for a few hours to buy some new ones, not more than a day. Depending on how many people you have in your home, and how much toilet paper you use. Unless you're single and you're rarely potty at home, you're probably going to be miserable if you go beyond that time.

But my situation is worse, when the last roll of toilet paper in my home is about to run out, the home of paper towels, urine and detergent are almost gone. Obviously, my family seems to be in a "disaster" soon. But as usual, I was very busy and had no time to go shopping.

However, the final outcome of the "disaster" is very satisfactory. This April, I started testing "Google Shopping Express" (Google Shopping Express) project. The E-commerce service, which claims to be able to deliver orders within a few hours, is now being replicated in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can order goods from Target, Walgreens, toys, and Office Depot, and even small local stores in Blue Bottle office.

Google Shopping Express will be the store's most of the goods are aggregated into an interface, so that you can place a single. The prices of these items are exactly the same as in the physical store, and you can see the distribution options when you select the product, such as "any time Today" or "2 o'clock in the afternoon to 6". Once the delivery time is determined, the order is completed.

At the end of the day when my toilet paper was used up, I had a single service at noon. Just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a Google courier wearing a green T-shirt sent things to my doorstep. After receiving the goods, I immediately went back to work, the whole process did not step out of the door half step.

Google is reportedly considering charging 60 to 70 dollars in annual fees for the service, competing with Amazon's Gold-medal service. But at present, the company has not yet determined the final pricing, while in the testing phase, the entire service is completely free. I found the service very easy to use, not only inexpensive, but also extremely reliable. It changed my understanding of shopping when I first used the Amazon Gold service. In fact, just started soon, Google Shopping Courier will replace the Amazon, as I have many of the preferred purchase channels of daily necessities.

I used to buy toilet paper, tissue and urine through Amazon's Subscribe & Save service, and you can enjoy a high discount if you choose a regular courier. The effect of this service is quite satisfactory for something that is more certain, but it is not easy to use if it is difficult to estimate a product, such as a newborn's urine. I often use the Subscribe & Save service before the next shipment, and often when the new goods arrive, the home yard is not finished. But Google Shopping Express is much simpler, you do not have to run to the warehouse-type supermarket, you can buy the low-priced goods there, eliminating the car, parking, queuing trouble. And everything can be delivered to the door at once.

Broad prospects

After a few weeks, I have been deeply attracted by the idea of Google's shopping Express and believe that this will be the future trend of shopping. (In fact, this was also the past--1990 of shopping, and services such as Kozmo and Webvan have done similar business.) Not just Google, which, according to Reuters, is expanding the coverage of Amazon's fresh-amazonfresh business. After years of operation in Seattle, the company finally decided to provide the grocery delivery service in other cities. Amazon's move attests to a theory I put forward a year ago: the long-term goal of the E-commerce giant is to make the day's service a norm in most cases.

The current main disadvantage of Amazon is delivery delays. Although online shopping is suitable for many situations, most retail activities around the world still involve the need for instant purchases of toilet paper or dishwashing detergent. That could explain why Wal-Mart sold 500 billion of dollars a year, while Amazon's sales were only 61 billion dollars. Wal-Mart's users come to buy something for dinner several times a week, while purchasing more profitable goods. Amazon and Google are also trying to reach the market by delivering groceries and daily necessities to the service.

In the course of using the Google Shopping Express, I found that the plan is really promising. If properly deployed, service delivery on the day will completely eliminate the differences in merchandise between online and offline shopping. Now, when you want to buy something, you have to think about it: do I need it now? Can you wait two days? Is it worth having to drive to buy? And with the day delivery service, you don't have to be so tangled. All shopping can be done through the Internet.

But this is just the beginning. The long-term prospect of delivering services on the day is that it has hit the grocery market as well as the changes that Amazon pushed in the book and music markets. This advantage is obvious. In supermarkets, shelf space is limited and expensive, so it's hard to find everything you want in a store. Safeway is a moderate supermarket chain, not far from my home, probably can meet my three-fourths shopping needs. But most of the time when I'm looking for something unique--like high quality seafood, specialty spices, freshly baked coffee beans, premium breads and all kinds of coconut juice-still have to be dedicated to Whole Foods, Juno Joe's, Chinese or Indian markets, or some out-of-the-way places.

Ideally, a store should be able to meet all my needs, but it's simply not possible-my neighborhood has little demand for fresh Indian curry leaves and live lobsters, so it's impossible for Safeway to set up special shelves to sell these things. But if a store can sell goods to everyone in a big city, even if the conventional demand for certain commodities is not high enough, it can still add up. This creates a bright future for delivering services on the day: it will create a truly one-stop shopping platform. Even if you need a "long tail" product, you can be satisfied.

Pattern differences

Both Google and Amazon are trying to solve the problem, but the approach is slightly different. Google's services do not set up any warehouses, and everything is purchased directly from local businesses. To improve efficiency, the system will be purchased as far as possible from your nearest physical store. (The object I ordered was sent from a place 9.5 kilometres from my home.) In addition, unlike Amazon, Google Shopping courier has not sold milk, agricultural products and other perishable goods, but the company is trying to achieve this goal.

Google may also be trying to contract more retailers to expand the scope of its products. Service on the day may be the same as the network advertising system-the future, any want to participate in the business can be registered independently, through the system to sell goods. Google each display a search ads will charge a certain fee, similar to the future of Google Shopping courier may also be from each order to take some commission.

Amazon has also signed deals with local retailers. The Seattle procurement range includes dozens of restaurants, specialty supermarkets, meat and seafood stores, bakeries. But unlike Google, Amazon will also set up its own warehouses to sell goods directly to consumers. Many of the fruits and vegetables sold by the company are provided in the latter mode. Independent sales of goods can be closely controlled quality. Amazon also has a good feature that allows you to comment on the items you buy: For example, the avocado you buy today can score 2 points, while watercress can score 4.

I don't live in Seattle, so I never bought anything from Amazon, but I didn't feel sorry for the high price. The British cucumber is 5 dollars per pound (about 0.9 kg), about 4 dollars more than I have here. Mexican chili Peppers are even 6 dollars per pound, organic carrots nearly 5 dollars a bunch. None of this is in line with Amazon's historically low price policy, which is even more expensive than whole foods.

In addition, although Amazon has a lot of options, it doesn't contain everything I can buy in 10 minutes of driving. They do not sell curry leaves, no whole fish, no gluten corn bread, no baked coffee beans, no best coconut in the world. So, although the long tail grocery shopping can one day realize, but 2013 years of this "tail" is still very short.

Which service will eventually win, Google or Amazon? In recent years, many companies have tried to conquer the day service, but 11 percent. So the wisest answer seems to be that no one can win, especially in the area of perishable commodity sales, where profits have been meager and users ' expectations have been high (you'll never go shopping in a store that will crush eggs). So it's not surprising that two companies are unable to find a model that really satisfies their ambitions.

On the other hand, if the day's delivery of the grocery service succeeds, the rewards will be limitless, especially for Amazon. If the network giant can increase the variety of goods and reduce the price, it will be from a one or two times a week shop, into a daily shopping online grocery. It will become the world's most widely-tentacles retailer. More importantly, it will be the most popular retailer in the world-believe me, if someone can deliver your toilet paper every time you need it, you will fall in love with him. No matter how high the cost, no matter how difficult the challenge, Bezos (Jeff Bezos) can not ignore the huge benefits behind.