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This week Amazon announced it will begin delivering groceries from Whole Foods via Prime Now service to customers in Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas, and Virginia Beach. The company says it plans to expand the service to other U.S. cities later this year.

Why these four cities to start? Associate professor in the School of Information Studies (iSchool) at 黑料不打烊 says it鈥檚 likely the customer data sets are driving the initial pick of the delivery pilot markets.

McKnight says:

鈥淎mazon is orchestrating their respective Amazon Prime and Whole Foods customer data sets, and their overlap,聽to both optimize customer experience, and聽learn as much as possible from the data on these first four pilots before they聽scale聽to new markets. Picking聽Austin, Cincinnati, Dallas and Virginia Beach to start Amazon Prime Whole Foods 1-hour delivery is no doubt itself聽a data-driven choice.

鈥淢any other grocery and food retailers and distributors,聽who were anxious when their stock dropped after Amazon’s Whole Foods acquisition, are likely today again聽re-assessing their cyber-physical strategic聽strengths and weaknesses.聽Many already have聽somewhat analogous tie-ups or delivery service offerings. But none have the scale and market scope Amazon offers. Can they best compete by聽working with Amazon Prime? Or, for example, can they best serve their local markets with Uber? GrubHub? All of the above?聽Or can they seriously expect to聽continue to compete聽going it alone?

鈥淎mazon must both expand Whole Foods market reach cloud-style,聽and avoid聽delivering ‘not fresh’ services anywhere for this initiative to succeed. It would leave a very bad taste in Amazon and Whole Foods customers’ mouths, if Alexa were to聽get a cyber-pants on fire聽reputation for聽lying about freshness and quality. Hence their modest initial synchronized聽service聽roll-out, since even Bezos cannot afford to get this wrong.鈥�

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is an assistant professor in the Supply Chain Management department at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at 黑料不打烊. Her research addresses issues of how individuals make decisions within the supply chain and what effect these have on the efficiencies and profits of the firms. She says Amazon has new unique opportunity with this new service, but fulfillment remains a question.

Niederhoff says:

鈥淎mazon has the unique opportunity to use the physical infrastructure of Whole Foods to bring fresh food delivery to limited test markets. Fulfillment remains a question, though. Whole Foods has long offered online ordering with in-store pick-up, but recent struggles with in-store inventory may worsen under even higher demand unless really careful forecasting is done over a (potentially) more limited list of products. However, if the orders are being fulfilled from a more centralized location, some volume benefits may allow a steady use of space and labor.鈥�

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