Amazon to Offer Same-Day Shipping

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In its continuing strategy to become the one-stop shopping site for everything under the sun, Amazon has announced that it will soon offer same-day shipping, a move that will place it in direct competition not just with other online shopping sites, but with local brick-and-mortar stores as well.

The one advantage that brick-and-mortar stores that sites like Amazon can never entirely replicate is the impulse purchase.

 How successful this plan will be depends on a few factors. Amazon is expanding its network of massive warehouses and spending big bucks to do it. They’ll be opening new warehouses in New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee. They also plan on opening up to 10 new warehouses in California by 2015.

What kind of impact this move will have on small businesses remains to be seen. We doubt that it will be disastrous for local retailers, as the ever-provocative Farhad Majoo recently predicted in Slate. Most brick-and-mortar bookstores and music stores went under years ago, and the biggest electronics retailer, Best Buy, seems to be months away from shutting its doors. And many of the other items Amazon sells, specifically groceries and clothing, are things that most people are still going to want to shop for the old-fashioned way.

The one advantage that brick-and-mortar stores that sites like Amazon can never entirely replicate is the impulse purchase. When you browse store shelves, you’re likely to come across things you didn’t intend to buy, but suddenly remember you need.

Online shopping, on the other hand, is more purpose-driven. Shopping on Amazon is  not the easiest way to stumble upon products you never knew existed, and you’re less likely to be enticed by product design or product placement, two things that help things sell in traditional retail environments.

There seems little question that Amazon will continue to grow and may in fact displace some local retailers, but we don’t see the sky falling just yet.