Retail giant Amazon.com, Inc. wants to speed up delivery speeds with Prime Now which offers one-hour delivery service. The new service was launched in select areas inside Manhattan on Thursday.
Prime Now promises speedier shipping
Prime Now delivers a variety of items including books, toys, and everyday essentials such as health or kitchen items delivered to their home within an hour for just $7.99. There is also the free two hour delivery option for those who don’t want to pay extra. Amazon is set to roll out the service is more U.S. cities sometime next year. The service will start 6:00 AM in the morning and end at 12:00 PM midnight local time. Amazon Prime Now will operated seven days a week and the new Manhattan facility serves as the hub. The service is available exclusively to Prime subscribers.
The e-tailer’s senior vice president for Amazon’s worldwide operations Dave Clark explained, “There are times when you can’t make it to the store and other times when you simply don’t want to go. There are so many reasons to skip the trip and now Prime members in Manhattan can get the items they need delivered in an hour or less.”
Amazon’s latest shipping option to compete with other same-day ship services
Amazon Prime already offers speedier shipping service for a yearly fee of $99 with thousands of items available for two-day shipping. Prime Now offers a speedier alternative for people who want or need to recieve their items within an hour or two. This new service was designed to compete with similar one-hour delivery services Urbanfetch and Kozmo.com in major metropolitan areas including New York City. In early 2014, Google expanded its Shopping Express same-day delivery service to Los Angeles and New York.
As more people flock to e-tailers and online shops to make most of their purchases, the need for speedier shipping grows. Amazon couldn’t have chosen a better time to launch Prime Now as it is exactly one week before Christmas.
