The way we use the scan and go at Sam’s is to scan each item as we place it into the cart. It takes just a shade extra time than without scanning. The reason this works better at Sam’s is I am not bagging up the items at the end or anything. So once we have concluded our shopping, we simply click ‘check out’ and pay with the Sam’s credit card (or other credit card). And just get the phone scanned at the end when you walk out.
There are not Costcos that are close to us, so that is not an option for us.
We have not used the regular lines since they added scan and go, except for one item that we could not scan. I have even put things back that would not scan because I did not want the hassle of waiting in the line.
If, as you stated, same-day delivery is an alternative to a brick and mortar store, then it doesn’t add more cars to the road, and it probably still results in a reduction in vehicle traffic. If I order something same-day instead of driving to the store, it’s very likely that my delivery will be combined with someone else’s, resulting in fewer cars on the road.
Yes, I could combine multiple items into a single trip, but I can only really do so across my single household, and only if I plan ahead well. On average, Amazon’s logistics are going to come out way ahead because they can combine multiple same-day deliveries across households into one vehicle and because they’re probably a lot better at planning than the average household.
The obvious benefit is that I don’t have to go do it. If I discover in the morning that I need an X before tomorrow, my options are either to go drive to the store today and get it, or to get same-day delivery. Even a very quick trip to the store is going to take close to 20 minutes round trip. As long as the additional charge for same day delivery is less than my time (and it is for the reasons above, and because I make more money than a delivery driver), then it’s a no-brainer for me to get same-day delivery.
Now, of course, I try to plan ahead. Diapers aren’t usually something that you all of sudden realize you need. In our case, we had about nine months’ of warning (which I understand is fairly standard). But sometimes things break and do actually need to be replaced right away.
I think the “drive to the store and drive back” pattern is so ingrained that we don’t notice it anymore. In some cases, it can be more wasteful of resources than same-day delivery (where the driver may make several deliveries on the same trip).
That said, I have misgivings about quick (*) delivery, just like the OP. And I can’t quite define what bothers me.
(* AFAIK, Amazon doesn’t offer same-day delivery in my area.)
First, I consider driving brick-mortar stores out of Business a very bad Thing. There’s already the Problem of disparity in the US, where poor People living in bad neighbourhoods don’t have Access to groceries - either it’s additionial hour by bus, or a car, to get to a mall with a superstore. Being forced to order everything online because normal Shops have disappeared would make this worse. (It’s also a Problem since rural Areas in the US don’t have good Internet Connection, because infrastructure is not a priority for govt.)
Second, how do you know that your delivery will be combined? The whole reason same-day delivery is problematic compared to normal mail is that it isn’t combined, but driven seperatly. Otherwise, they can’t make it the same day.
One Person orders at 11 am, the Driver leaves at 12 for your street. Next house orders at 1 pm, Driver leaves at 2 pm - seperate trips.
It’s that difficult to plan to buy groceries, toothpaste and a big parcel of diapers once a week? What? I’m a single household, too, and I try to shop Saturday morning early because that’s easiest with work during the day. (Granted, I don’t cook, but I can still plan how much milk etc. I will Need for one whole week.)
Do you have any proof of that? The usual logistic solution, whether it’s bureaucracy, a Company, or Amazon, is to send different things seperate - that’s why a lot of the envelopes I get from big companies have a pre-printed message “Sorting letters to one Person together would cost more in labour than sending several separate letters on the same day costs in postage + envelopes, so that’s why you might receive more than one letter from us”.
And Amazon already offers the Option, if I buy more than one Thing with different readiness times, to Combine everything in one parcel - meaning it will only be sent until the last item is there - or sending several seperate parcels.
If one single trip to the store (by car) takes 20 minutes, your infrastructure is bad.
But why is it a seperate trip? Can’t you shop before/ after driving to work? Can’t you shop once a week? I don’t quite understand the logistic difficulty assuming you aren’t out in the boondooks (and then, do you have good Internet Access?).
But the question was about everyday normal purchases - the mass of purchases, not the 1% exception of things that are urgent.
I don’t think that’s how it works, though I can’t offer you specific proof other than logic. I suspect there’s a reason Amazon says that in order to have same-day, you have to order by a certain time. I think they collect all the order that have come in by, say, 2pm, then farm out all the deliveries for a specific neighborhood/area to a single driver. Any time I order same day, no matter what time I’ve ordered, I get my delivery usually in the late afternoon hours.
Watching proud retail giants like Sears and JC Penny wither and die is very disheartening. Mall culture was a huge part of most Americans teen years.
Do we really want a single company like Amazon to control most of the retail market?
Now Amazon wants to destroy our grocery stores. This is way out of control.
We all need to think long and hard about what we order online and how it ultimately harms our local businesses. Our friends and neighbors depend on those jobs.
Not that I would buy groceries online, but I go buy groceries least four times a week, at an absolute minimum.
Where on earth are you? Around here a single trip to any store takes no less than ten minutes of driving each way - often closer to fifteen or twenty. And then there’s the time to shop. When I go shopping it usually takes forty minutes to an hour - longer if I go to more than one store.
(For the record, I’m in Boise, Idaho. As urban as it gets in this state, and things are still kind of spread out.)
Personally I have never in my life next-day-aired anything, because I’m cheap. Not having prime, if I order online I get the free, 1-week shipping speed (which I’m sure next-day-airers are paying for), unless I’m in dire straits, in which case two-day-air will do. And of course if I can buy something in town I generally do - I like brick and mortar.
I have never tried it; I know that shortly before Christmas, online Shops (not only Amazon) and the Mail itself will give timeframes “If you want your parcel to be delivered on the 24th, you Need to order it by Dec. 21st, 9 PM / you Need to send it by Dec. 20th 6 pm” (or similar).
But if there is indeed a cut-off time, and not a continious delivery, then
it’s even more similar to normal mail
it’s useless for emergency. If my important doodad breaks at 9 pm on Saturday, (when Shops here are closed) and I Need a replacement today (Shops here closed on Sunday whole day), then with a cut-off time of say, 2 pm, it won’t be available same day anyway.
Not the US. A City of > 1 mio. People. The area where I live, there are two supermarkets (Rewe and Edeka) in 5 min. Walking, plus 1 organic (Basic). 1 Busstop/ subway/ 10 min. walk away is 1 Aldi, and 1 Tengelmann (Tengelmann recently went bust, and part of its store were bought by Edeka). 10 min. on foot in the other direction is a “Shopping Center” with 1 Drugstore (dm), 1 electronic market (Media Markt), 1 Supermarket (netto).
I could also shop near the City centre where I work (and travel around by subway/ Bus/ Tram), but Prices might be higher for Food.
Yeah, but once upon a time, Sears, Monkey Wards, and supermarket chains - and later WalMart - were the market disrupters, putting mom and pops out of business.
Going to be interesting to see how malls are reinvented as they go out of business.
It seems to be a question of scale - sending millions of parcels, it’s worth getting a specialized machine that selects Optimum size from a range of cardboard parcels.
Sending only a hundred parcels per week, might be cheaper to get a Standard packing machine, with only 3 cardboard box sizes, and fill the rest with air-filled plastic bags adjusted to size.
Now, admittely it’s easier in a big City - but the People I know who live in the countryside, with either only 1 Supermarket in their village, or None (small villages dying), they plan extra carefully to make only one weekly trip by car. They don’t want to waste time driving around.
It’s only a Problem to adjust how much and what you buy when Situation changes - you go from single to Family, or back from Family to single, and it takes time to adjust cooking sizes, and buying less Food.
Things are way, way more spread out in the American west, probably because we have space to burn. It does cross my mind to wonder if online shopping is more popular in the US as a result.
I wasn’t counting the time for Shopping itself. And if I have to go to three different stores (Supermarket, Drugstore, Special store) it takes me an hour or more, too.
Though do you Count the time browsing until you find what you Need online, too?
If you always buy the same Thing, you can save it online - but if you always buy the same dozen items in the same Supermarket, you know the layout, too. (Until the store decides to renovate, and everything is in a different place…:p)
I do online browsing weirdly - I’m spending most of my time window shopping for entertainment value, while trying to talk myself out of buying anything. There are elements of that to my physical-store browsing too (and when that happens the trips are at least an hour), but when I’m buying food things are significantly faster. Probably would be if I was crazy enough to buy food online, too.
And because a car-friendly architecture was encouraged, especially after the 1950s. (In the Doris Day movie from the 50s, Send me no flowers, the couple lives in the Suburb, but husband takes the Train into the City to work each day, his wife Drops him off/ Collects him. So it used to be possible. But when building whole Suburbs without sidewalks, People are forced to drive. Which is another strike against poor People, aside from bad for Environment).
Experts have Long suggested, especially together with the housing crisis after the house bubble burst, and now many houses are Standing empty, to completly re-design cities and Suburbs for Close foot-traffic and public Transport. The benefits would not only be less exhaust/ pollution from cars and less oil, but also more time saved without traffic jams, more community Feeling if there is a pedestrian Zone with all main Shops in Walking distance, street artists etc.
Before online, there were paper catalogues - Sears, I think, in US? (In Germany there was Quelle and Otto). Popular with rural People, who didn’t have big department stores nearby, and elderly, who couldn’t get around easily.
But that was for big items, not cheap or normal stuff you could easily buy around the Corner. By making it easier, and offering cheap chinese Plastics, online Shops are apparently seducing customers to buy much more online than they would before. (One way to measure this is how much parcel volume, at least in Germany, has increased in past years. A lot of People like to order stuff and send it back if it doesn’t fit, which increases volume of traffic = trucks filled with all those parcels).
However, that still doesn’t explain why normal = 2 or 3 days of mail is not good enough. Why is same day necessary for normal items? Not emergency buys (doodad broke, I forgot I’m out of Printer and Need this Essay for tomorrow!, that Kind of Thing).
The OP didn’t ask if online Shopping itself is necessary; he asked about same-day delivery as quasi-Standard (by not making it more expensive than normal mail delivery).
And so far, I can only see disadvantages, but no real Advantage to this question.
Well, there’s also the stuff that simply isn’t available locally. I am burdened with several hobbies (well, my wallet thinks it’s a burden), and at least half of them would be severely hampered were I unable to ship stuff in.
Based on the above posts, the strong impression I get is that people use next-day-air because they don’t see disadvantages - they don’t find it significantly more expensive than two-day-air or snail mail, and it’s marginally more convenient, so why not?
Which is sort of similar reasoning to why I use the slower free shipping, except that to me the fast shipping is expensive (no Prime), and I find my convenience in the freeness of it all.
Both the free shippers and the next-day-airers are quite likely (and in my case, certainly) consuming resources that other people are paying for, and we’re doing it because Amazon is transparently redirecting/absorbing those extra costs. I don’t really consider that a bad thing. The only part that would be worrisome to me is if the additional costs incurred are environmental - if Amazon ships each package in a separate trip via Hummer for example. Or if they flood the skies with package-and-spy-camera packing drones. Stuff like that, that society suffers for, would be bad.
And of course I do like to support my local stores - on the condition they actually stock what I want to buy.
I would assume there are meaningful savings for Amazon in terms of storage: assuming you have to have local distribution centers anyway, you can keep them smaller if you’re so streamlined that stuff goes out almost instantly.