Amazon’s push to add more features to its lucrative Prime membership program has hit another milestone in New York: One-hour deliveries now cover all of Manhattan.
The bike messenger system completed its expansion on the island last week after starting in December, a spokeswoman said. Initially confined to a single ZIP code (10001, extending from the Empire State Building west to Penn Station and the Hudson River) Amazon had been rapidly adding new neighborhoods over the winter. The company shows no sign of slowing down.
“We are excited to expand soon to other boroughs,” spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman said.
A brief outline of how it works: Prime members, who already pay $99 annually, can order through Prime Now via a dedicated mobile app, and buy basics like paper towels, shampoo and batteries. One-hour delivery costs $7.99, and two-hour deliveries don’t cost anything.
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Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has never disclosed precisely how many Prime subscription members it has, only saying in December that “tens of millions” pay the annual fee. But by all accounts, member rolls have expanded significantly as the company adds more features to membership, such as a streaming music service, access to digital video and free storage.
One recent report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that Prime members spend $1,500 a year on Amazon compared to $625 for non-members.
A portion of Amazon’s 470,000-square-foot leased space on 34th St will serve as a delivery hub for Prime Now.
Much of the competition in the tech-enabled delivery wars centers around groceries and fresh food, and Amazon launched Amazon Fresh grocery service in Brooklyn last October. But the general delivery business is not exactly lonely — Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is already there.
Date:- February 17, 2015
Source:- New York Business Journal