Amazon Lockers Boost Micro Visits to Whole Foods Locations
LOS ANGELES, CA - The possibility of porch pirates stealing away with our online goods before we can enjoy them is too much to bear, but luckily for us online shoppers, Amazon has come up with a solution that benefits more than just us consumers. As a rising grocery duo, Amazon and Whole Foods are mixing services, with Whole Foods groceries now offered via Amazon Prime and Amazon lockers—spots where online shoppers can pick up their online goods—now found in Whole Foods stores.
And thanks to these lockers, Whole Foods stores are seeing an influx of shoppers making quick trips to locations with one thing in mind—their online purchases—but who end up staying and browsing the distractions aplenty you can only find at brick and mortar.
According to Reuters, location data advertising firm inMarket studied 98 stores, 76 of which had lockers, in the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Francisco, Washington, Houston, Boston, and Atlanta metro areas and found that short “micro” visits, defined as three to five minutes in length, were up 11 percent at stores with lockers since Amazon closed its purchase of Whole Foods last year. In comparison, stores in the same cities without lockers, were only up seven percent.
“There’s a serendipity and immediacy to the in-store experience,” said Todd Dipaola, Chief Executive and Founder of inMarket. “As good as delivery is getting–one-day delivery, sometimes one-hour delivery–that still can’t compete with the one-second immediacy of being in store and picking up that avocado that I’m about to make guacamole out of because I thought about it in that moment.”
And with more foot traffic, Whole Foods is taking advantage of the lockers as a new way to boost sales. Specifically, Reuters noted, the grocer is driving impulse sales by placing products near lockers and providing quick and easy payment options that boast an ease-of-purchase online shoppers can’t resist.
Will more brick-and-mortar behemoths fuse online shopping with traditional grocery as a way to boost sales? AndNowUKnow will continue to report with the latest.
