Amazon to square-off against supermarkets with online grocery service
Amazon is seeking to broaden its offer by mounting a concerted foray into the domain of online grocery shopping by expanding a trial service in Seattle to other US cities.
For the past five years the digital retailer has operated a web-based fresh food service in its home city, delivering dairy, fruit and meat produce via its fleet of delivery vans.
Now Amazon Fresh is to be rolled out to Los Angeles with plans to bring the offer to San Francisco later in the year.
Should this prove successful the retailer harbours grand ambitions to mushroom the scheme to a total of 20 cities and even bring it to international markets, although Britain already has a relatively well-developed sector through the likes of Ocado and Tesco.
Amazon believes that, despite the lower margins, online groceries could provide a timely revenue fillip in the years ahead, particularly as it is sorely under-represented in the sector.
At present online grocery sales account for just five per cent of the market in the UK, well below the comparative figure for music and video (80 per cent), books (50 per cent) and electrical (40 per cent).