Google V.S. Amazon: Electricity Supplier Express Service War Upgrade

< p > in the field of electric business, competition with < a href= "http:// www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > Amazon < /a > (Amazon) becomes more and more difficult.

The company's recent earnings report illustrates this: Amazon will add 6 more on the basis of the existing 59 distribution centers, so that more customers can enjoy shorter delivery distances, more convenient than ever before.

By the end of 2014, the company will have 15 specialized sorting centers to speed up delivery and reduce delivery costs.

Investment in physical facilities and logistics technology enables Amazon to have cost and efficiency advantages in the face of any competitor.

For Amazon's challengers, the choice of a positive attack is likely to end in failure.

But Google (Google) has taken roundabout tactics and is likely to work, which will put Amason in danger.

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< p > strong > express > /strong > /p >

< p > although Amazon is investing heavily in order to speed up deliveries -- discuss with the US Post Office on Sunday delivery service; deliver services in more cities in the day; and even launch the UAV delivery test -- but Google's Shopping Express service has a price advantage.

With a large number of contract workers, Google allows people to place orders from more than 10 entity businesses and often deliver them on the same day.

Because of Whole Foods, Taghit (Target) and good city (Costco) and other partners, < a href= "http:// www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > Google < /a > can provide tens of thousands of commodities, and do not need to establish any commodity inventory.

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< p > the efficiency of Amazon is much higher than that of the search giant itself, although the efficiency of Amazon is much higher in terms of mass order sorting. "Google"'s low efficiency has nothing to do with the search giant itself.

As long as Shopping Express can break even, Google has legitimate reasons to expand the scope of the service to other places such as New York, Losangeles and San Francisco through investment.

There are rumors that Google will launch the above actions in the next few months and enter most of the metropolitan areas of the United States.

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< p > < strong > fresh and frozen < /strong > /p >

Less than P, but perhaps more importantly, Google is tackling the biggest weakness of Shopping Express: so far, customers have not been able to order perishable goods such as agricultural products and meat from grocery partners.

Recent surveys sent to customers indicate that this situation will soon change.

But Google is clearly unable to provide services free of charge.

Shopping Express is free for most users during the probation period, but the company also cautioned that "actual freight" is actually $4.99 per unit.

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< p > this survey shows that if the annual fee of $89 ($8 per month) is paid, it will not be necessary to pay the shipping cost of $4.99 per sheet, which is like the Prime service providing unlimited free two day service after receiving the annual fee of $99.

But even if you pay an annual fee of $89, you still need to pay $7.99 a month for fresh or frozen goods. The order amount is $150, which is free of freight (it is worth noting that Google may be testing many different pricing options, I just mentioned one of them).

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Amazon has its own fresh distribution service called Amazon AmazonFresh (P).

At present, the company only does this service in many places in Seattle and California, and the price in California is as high as 299 dollars (or 200 dollars plus 99 dollars in gold service annual fee).

Amazon is trying to run a plan in Seattle, with an order exceeding US $125, which is free of freight, otherwise it will charge 8 to 10 US dollars per shipment.

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< p > above these figures, the most important thing is their similarity, not the slight difference.

Amazon has always won at a low price, but recently the company's newly launched Fire Phone and these freight options indicate that its price has no special advantage.

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< p > < strong > familiar place < /strong > < /p >.

Less than P, for Amazon, the more trouble is that Google can sign new businesses and expand the list of Shopping Express.

Recently, Barnes and Noble has become the nineteenth partner of Google.

Although the number of CO businesses may have an upper limit, there is no doubt that most traditional retailers will eventually join.

The biggest threat they face is that consumers no longer shop from them, but instead turn to Amazon's embrace.

Google has provided them with a way to make full use of physical shop assets, and it is no longer important for consumers to enter shops.

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< p > familiarity is also a benefit to shoppers.

You may understand and trust the products you purchased at Wall Green or Walgreen.

Sometimes, facing the dazzling choice on Amazon website, you may not know exactly what you will get.

In addition to recommending dozens of products similar to your recent browsing products, Amazon has made few achievements in organizing its stores.

Despite its great success, the company is not an excellent businessman, nor has it been an excellent website.

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< p > < strong > technical problems < /strong > < /p >

< p > with the pfer of e-commerce to mobile terminals, the ability to repurchase trusted products becomes more important.

Although Google's partners have an advantage in this area, Amazon is trying to gain its advantages.

Fire Phone has a technology called Firefly that allows users to scan many physical objects and buy them immediately.

If you are in a shop, you want to see a product and buy it online, this technology will be very useful.

Unfortunately, this technology only appears on the Fire Phone mobile phone, but few people can use it.

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< p > but Firefly is not the only weapon of the company.

Dash is a small hand held scanner and recorder. You can use it to tell the Amazon fresh department that you have finished your milk, or you can scan barcode to add some cereal to your shopping list.

This is a clever little invention, but the premise is whether you are willing to give up the traditional < a href= "http:// www.91se91.com/news/index_c.asp" > shopping list < /a > whether it is recorded on paper or in application.

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< p > < strong > "gold medal" time < /strong > /p >

Amazon P recently raised the membership fee of gold service from $79 to $99.

Although the company claims that the price increases have not had any adverse effects, they are forced to spend money on advertising for the gold medal service, which seems to be the first time in history.

Advertising costs offset some of the extra income that should have been earned because of rising prices.

According to CNET report of science and technology information network, the survey of Consumers Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) by market research firm shows that 95% of the customers will accept the new pricing by "affirmation" or "may", which means that the Amazon gold service will lose about 1000000 customers because of the increase in price.

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< p > CIRP previously estimated that the gold medal members spend an average of $1340 per year on the website. According to the latest data from Amazon, this will generate more than 350 dollars in gross profit.

If the service loses 500 thousand customers, the company will lose $175 million, which excludes the cost of publicizing the service.

Worse still, the price hike will also have a deterrent effect, which will discourage potential customers.

Six months ago, I raised the question: why is Amazon playing up the gold medal service (I have used the service for many years)? The answer is obvious.

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< p > the company did not publish specific data on the number of users of gold medal members. This means that it is impossible for us to know how much the price increases affect the growth of the number of users, but it must be lower than the price unchanged.

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< p > Google is going to make 89 dollars as the base price of Shopping Express, which is 10 dollars lower than the gold medal service. This is no coincidence.

Although the gold medal members have sent free streaming video, Shopping Express has responded with the benefits of the day's service.

In view of the fact that Netflix has 36 million 200 thousand US users, video enthusiasts may pay for the net flight service, and the group that needs instant service will be given priority to Google instead of Amazon if they choose two.

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< p > < strong > low cost provider < /strong > < /p >

Less than P, but Google's bigger advantage is that it can attack both sides of Amazon.

In terms of resources, Google's foundation is much more solid, with 60 billion US dollars in cash, while Amazon has only 12 billion 500 million dollars.

Google is profitable, and Amazon often walks on the line between profit and loss.

In the past year, cash in Google's financial statements has increased by $10 billion 500 million, while Amazon has increased by only $200 million, which is 50 times that of the latter.

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P, and Google is also a winner in terms of price, because it can enter the market far below Amazon's pricing.

Although Amazon's labor efficiency may be higher, Shopping Express's starting cost is much lower. It only needs a delivery team and some distribution personnel to start.

Moreover, Google often delivers goods closer to customers, which is especially important for fresh distribution.

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< p > this also means that Google can provide delivery service for perishable goods in almost anywhere Shopping Express.

Amazon's fresh service has slowed down the pace of expansion because of the remote distribution facilities and many problems that need to be solved.

Google, with its lightness, may make other innovations that Amazon can hardly achieve.

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< p > of course, no one underestimated Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos) and his company.

Without excellent execution and strong focus on customer needs, Amazon would not have achieved today.

But recently, the company has entered a more competitive field, with more and more enemies, including Microsoft (Microsoft) and Apple, so we have reason to suspect that Bezos has ignored some potential threats that are the most important business for the company.

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