The e-commerce retailer, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), riddled by delays during the last Christmas season, is looking for efficient delivery alternatives and the latest delivery mode used by the company includes taxi deliveries. The company is said to use taxi deliveries in California during the past few weeks.
As mentioned by the Wall Street Journal, the online retailer is using taxi delivery service in California and San Francisco with the help of Flywheel, mobile app for taxi calling. The company is using licensed taxis for delivery in its efforts to find out alternative yet cost-effective delivery methods for its packages.
Last year, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) suffered several shipment delays because of the huge online orders during the Christmas shopping season and the company blamed FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) and United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) for the same. The retailer is doing everything possible to avoid similar delays and as per the report, the company delivered up to 10 packages per taxi for an average cost of $5 per package.
The online retailer is looking for ways to lower its shipping cost, which increased to 8.9% last year as compared to 7.2% in 2009. The company is collaborating with other local courier companies to speed up its deliveries along with its association with the USPS for delivering grocery items.
When asked about these new delivery alternatives, Sucharita Mulpura, Forrester Research analysts, said that the company is working on a “same-day delivery algorithm” to find out the cheapest and most effective delivery services. While considering same-day delivery as a niche service for customers, Mulpura added,
“The reality is, people generally aren’t willing to pay enough for the service to make it worthwhile for these companies.”
The company is known to work on its same-day delivery model with drone deliveries and premium Amazon Prime service. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) offers Amazon Prime service at an annual cost of $99.
This article has been written by Prakash Pandey.
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