Amazon Prime customers will soon have the opportunity to access an extra 7,000 products, as the ecommerce leader rolls out its on-demand Prime Now delivery service to a select handful of independent retailers in London.
The online giant has initially added products from a handful of luxury health and beauty and high-end wine and spirit retailers to its existing 15,000 Prime Now items, and other local stores in the capital may soon have the opportunity to reach customers all over the city within an hour.
In a statement, Amazon’s European director for Prime Now, Mariangela Marseglia, confirmed that more local shops can expect the opportunity to make their products available through the service in the future.
She said: “Local store delivery through Prime Now will expand to more shops and more customers. By working with local shops, we are increasing selection for Prime customers.”
Although trialling the service upgrade in London, Amazon’s existing Prime Now service has expanded to cover almost a third of the UK, and regional stores can anticipate sales opportunities in the near future.
Cormac Tobin, managing director of the parent company that owns John Bell & Croyden – one of the retailers brought into the service – said that on-demand Prime Now delivery represented a boost to the store’s profits, with products available to users all over the capital “at the click of a button”.
Tobin suggested that the extension of the on-demand service helped smaller retailers to compete with the convenience of online shopping.
“The needs and expectations of consumers are constantly changing, and with technological advances we are evolving to meet them,” he added.
The news that Amazon has brought independent shops into its on-demand offering could reassure those who feared that the introduction of the service into London in June last year would create unrealistic levels of competition for small retailers and damage the prosperity of British high streets.
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