Business

Web retailers like Amazon and eBay try to regain edge with same-day delivery

Web retailers are looking cautiously at brick-and-mortar delivery services as the Senate looks to pass a bill to charge taxes on their sales.

The proposed legislation would force many online retailers to begin collecting taxes on their wares in all states, not just where they have offices.

Having lost their pricing advantage, in order to better compete with brick-and-mortar, major Web retailers like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Google are testing whether customers will pay more for same-day shipping — and testing their own infrastructures to discover the best method of executing it.

The groupthink in e-tail is that perhaps the immediacy of receiving their purchases will keep consumers shopping online.

But not all consumers are enticed by the option. According to a recent report by The Boston Consulting Group, unless you’re an affluent 18- to 34-year-old “millennial” (and only 2 percent of US consumers are), you may not be taking advantage of these same-day delivery options. Millennials were 56 percent more likely to utilize the same-day delivery option.

In fact, overall, consumers care more about the basics when online shopping — including price of delivery (74 percent), ease of returns (50 percent) and tracking (49 percent), compared with same-day delivery (12 percent).

Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester Research, predicts, “A very small percent will pay for same-day shipping. But the vast majority won’t.”

Since November, Walmart has been testing same-day delivery services in Northern Virginia, Minneapolis, Denver and Philadelphia on all general merchandise for a $10 flat fee, with no minimum purchase.

EBay Now, the same-day delivery app that’s currently available on IOS, rolled out in San Francisco in October and soon thereafter in New York and San Jose, Calif., and plans to introduce the service in Chicago and Dallas this summer.

Amazon introduced its Local Express Delivery in 2009, and currently counts 10 metro markets. Deliveries costs $8.99, plus 99 cents per item, and vary on deadlines depending on the market, with some orders needing to be placed by 7 a.m. As recently reported by Wired, Amazon is currently building nine additional distribution centers around the country.

Google is the latest to join in, launching its Shopping Express service in the San Francisco Bay Area just one month ago.