Amazon.com

Amazon's Warehouse Workers Get Same Parental Leave Benefits as Corporate Staff
August 21, 2017 at 1:28 pm

Amazon.com's relatively low-paid warehouse workers get the same parental leave benefits as the company’s highly paid software developers and executives — a rarity for U.S. hourly workers. Amazon’s move to revamp its parental leave benefits, which began in 2015, coincided with a wider wave of perk enhancements among booming U.S. technology companies concerned about retaining talented…

Wal-Mart Files Patent for a Floating Warehouse
August 21, 2017 at 1:11 pm

Wal-Mart has opened a new front in its battle with Amazon.com. The world’s largest retailer has applied for a U.S. patent for a floating warehouse that could make deliveries via drones, which would bring products from the aircraft down to customers’ homes. The blimp-style machine would fly at heights between 500 feet and 1,000 feet (as much…

Trump Again Goes After Amazon on Taxes
August 18, 2017 at 11:23 am

President Trump renewed his attack on Amazon.com Wednesday, tweeting that the e-commerce giant is "doing great damage to tax-paying retailers" and removing jobs in cities. Trump's blistering tweet was issued hours after The Washington Post — the newspaper owned by Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos — ran an editorial with the headline, "Mr. Trump gives comfort to racists." Total…

Amazon Forcing Retailers to Speed Up Their Deliveries
August 15, 2017 at 9:57 am

In Total Retail's recent survey and subsequent report, The Amazon Effect: How Retailers Are Adapting Their Businesses to Better Compete With the Industry Leader, nearly 90 percent of retail executives said they “strongly" or “somewhat" agree that Amazon.com has changed consumers’ expectations for order delivery. Specifically, consumers’ expectations for delivery of their online purchases have changed…

Consumers’ Delivery Expectations Have Changed Thanks to Amazon
August 8, 2017 at 11:59 am

Nearly 90 percent of respondents in a recent Total Retail and IBM survey said they “strongly" or “somewhat" agree that Amazon.com has changed consumers’ expectations for order delivery (see the chart below). The report, The Amazon Effect: How Retailers Are Adapting Their Businesses to Better Compete With the Industry Leader, analyzes the impact Amazon’s growing…

Retailers Invest in Reviews, Shipping Upgrades to Better Compete With Amazon
August 3, 2017 at 12:09 pm

As retailers know, much of Amazon’s success can be credited to its many innovations, from supply chain to customer experience to merchandising and more. To keep pace with the e-commerce leader and its many technology innovations, retailers have started to implement new technology capabilities of their own. In the chart below, taken from Total Retail's…

Amazon Hosts Job Fair, Expects to Hire 50,000
August 2, 2017 at 11:17 am

Amazon.com is hosting a job fair today in an attempt to fill 50,000 warehouse positions by hiring people on the spot in some of the U.S. cities that host its largest operation hubs. The retailer announced last weekend that it would host job fairs in places like Baltimore and Buffalo, New York for full-time and part-time jobs…

Are Retailers Worried About Amazon's Push Into Brick-and-Mortar?
July 20, 2017 at 11:48 am

Long the undisputed leader in e-commerce, Amazon.com has turned its attention to the other piece of the retail puzzle: physical stores. In the last year-and-a-half, Amazon has opened seven bookstores across the country, with plans to open six more by the end of 2017. In addition, Amazon made a big splash last month with it…

Amazon's Whole Foods Deal Sparks Antitrust Scrutiny
July 18, 2017 at 9:55 am

Amazon.com’s expansion plans, including its agreement to buy Whole Foods Market Inc. for $13.7 billion, are raising hackles in Washington — and Wall Street is taking notice. A U.S. lawmaker has called for hearings on the proposed deal to consider its ramifications for shoppers and workers. Hedge-fund manager Doug Kass has taken a short position on the fast-growing…

Amazon Prime Day Takeaways and Reaction
July 12, 2017 at 5:03 pm

This past Tuesday was Amazon Prime Day, the online retailer’s third annual global shopping event exclusively for its Prime members. The day brought positives and negatives for Amazon, as it looked to further cement its position as the leading online retailer in the market. Let’s start with the positives: Amazon is reporting Prime Day was…