Amazon Innovation A Dash Faster Fresher Than Kroger, Safeway, and Publix

What once was media hype and considered another attention grabbing story by Amazon turns out to be true.  Amazon says it is going prime time with Dash.  Dash is the small plastic button, which is designed to be stuck or hung anywhere in your home, allows you to instantly reorder products, like toilet paper or diapers. 

Yesterday, TechHive noticed that the button is now out of beta and is available to any Prime customer willing to pay $4.99. As of today, there are 18-branded buttons available from Glad bags, Huggies diapers, Gatorade and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. All of them are being described as “limited edition” and available while supplies last. If you are an Amazon Prime member reading my blog this service is for you. If, for no other reason than to see where your best customers are going and why. 

Wow attention grabbing YES, but why would any Amazon Prime member ever go back to the dark ages and get into a car during a rain or snow storm and rush to get Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for the kids again?  Need diapers and the kids are napping? Then Dash is for you!  

This is the kind of customer focused innovation will continue the market share capitulation that the legacy grocery sector has experienced since 1998. Amazon has been a retail industry disruptive force and Dash maybe the force that will disrupt the aging grocery sector according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™.

Amazon claims the button is simple to set up when using your smartphone app to connect it to your home Wi-Fi network and to pick what product you want to order. Once connected, a single press automatically places orders for your favorite items. Orders can be canceled if you change your mind, and it prevents accidents by responding only to your first press, unless you specify otherwise.

We did say fresh and fast well Amazon is constantly trying to make purchases as easy as point and click and sit back and wait, so the Dash button isn’t that random it is fast and a fresh ideation that is customer focused.  

What else? Well Amazon has introduced the Amazon Dash Stick, a six-inch stick that allows Amazon Fresh customers to add items to an online grocery list using a built-in barcode scanner or microphone and launched the Dash Replenishment Service, which allows connected devices around the house that can detect when supply is running low with Amazon’s ordering platform. Don’t you just love it!  Customer focused once again. 

This is the kind of innovation that has heads turning at Safeway, Publix, Walmart, and Kroger. Why because innovation to them appears to be a new slotting fee for a new product.  Slotting fees are not customer focused. Not new. Have no customer relevance other than creating higher prices for the consumer. 

OK, Walmart are you keeping up? Not a chance according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™. Legacy grocery stores think category management (an executive crutch of a bygone era) continues to hold relevance.  They are wrong.  Category management is the opposite of consumer transparency, is it any wonder consumer are in a hurry to move on? 

Innovation that breaks the mold, continued innovation that complements the consumer’s with consumer facing transparency works.  Success Does Leave Clues: Legacy grocery stores I ask is your store fresher, faster, and more transparent this year than last year?  If so, is that enough? Maybe not? Look for Amazon to garner Attention and Customers. We congratulate Amazon for moving the retail sector forward. 

www.FoodserviceSolutions.us is the global leader in the Grocerant niche filled with Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food.  Is your company operating like it is 1999?  Are slotting fees more important too your bottom line than customers or transparency? If so then you are working for a company of yesterday, today and you may not have a seat at the consumers table tomorrow? Contact our Grocerant Guru™ at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us for ideations for tomorrow’s success.