Last week, Target and Google announced that they are expanding what was a years-old delivery partnership from a small experiment in a handful of cities to the entire continental U.S. The expansion will allow Target to become a retail partner in Google’s voice-shopping initiative, which lets owners of the Google Home “smart” speaker order items through voice commands like owners of the Echo can do from Amazon.
This announcement comes several weeks after Walmart inked a similar deal with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of products through the service. Other big-box retailers like Home Depot are also jumping on board. You can read more details here on Recode.
2 comments:
I am a price-sensitive consumer and always check the prices and maybe those delivery services are not for people like me. Why? I tried quite a few of them, and it seems that with time a lot of them go into the business model when the prices are jacked up 15%-30%, plus you have to pay delivery fee, convenience fee and tips.
I know, it's all about convenience, right? It should save time and trouble of shopping in the stores. But do I want to pay that much more?
As an example, Google Express has Costco among its stores. It used to be an awesome service, it was, until Costco prices on Google Express went 20%-30% up - no, thank you! Google Express and Walmart - limited merchandise selection and since Walmart started delivering through Google Express, their (Walmart's) grocery online prices went up (coincidence? - not so sure) - tea from $2.98 to $4.19, honey from $3.98 to $4.98 etc.
Amazon Prime Now - the minimum purchase for Sprouts went up and did for Amazon.
The latter - I do not mind that much, as I would rather buy more items at "normal" prices than overpaying with all those fees.
I live in SF Bay Area and the general pre-conceived notion that everybody swims in money here (ha!), maybe that is the reason delivery services are so popular here.
Anyway, I am curious to see how this new service is going to work. And sorry for the long comment.
PS. For whatever reason my comments always show me as "unknown", although I am logged in.
Thanks for your thoughts, Unknown. I live in the SF Bay Area as well, and I feel you: everyone thinks we're swimming in $, but that's not the case ;-) I think the reason we have so many home delivery options here is because we're part of Silicon Valley and the center of tech. The consensus is that we here - if anywhere - will embrace new services like this.
I personally like shopping in person (for the most part) so I won't be trying the new Google/Target delivery service. I understand the convenience factor, but it's just not my cup of tea.
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