Product Profile: Amazon Fresh
INDUSTRY
food
Category
food/grocery delivery services
products Profiled
Amazon Fresh online grocery delivery service
Amazon Fresh grocery stores
H-Score
43
ranked 14th of 25 within the food industry
ranked 46th of 76 overall
product descriptions
Amazon Fresh, a subsidiary of Amazon, provides online grocery delivery in most major U.S. cities as well in certain locations internationally. Orders are purchased and delivered from Amazon Fresh, unlike delivery services that deliver retail items from other stores. In-store Amazon Fresh shopping is offered parallel to the online grocery delivery, in more than 40 locations across the US.
product use
Shoppers order items from Amazon/Amazon Fresh online through the relevant Amazon website (and applicable listings) or the Amazon mobile app. A pick-up option is available as well in select locations. Shoppers in the regions where Amazon Fresh offers traditional in-person grocery stores can shop for items directly in those stores.
who’s affected
Amazon Fresh is available, through delivery, to shoppers in the cities and/or where physical stores are located. Amazon Fresh enables payment using SNAP/EBT cards for people who receive food assistance. Historically, an Amazon Prime subscription has been required to use Amazon Fresh, but Amazon is now offering its grocery services to customers in all U.S. cities and towns where Amazon Fresh grocery delivery is available.(1)
influence on health-related behaviors
EATING
moderate positive influence
Amazon Fresh facilitates the purchase of grocery items and thus its impact on the healthfulness of its customers' diets is largely dependent on the choices that the customers make and its influence on those choices.
Broadly speaking, grocery shopping leads to more home-cooked meals, which, in general, have been shown to be healthier than meals eaten out or ordered from restaurants.(2-6) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(7)
In Building H’s consumer research, over 90% of users of online grocery delivery services (not specific to Amazon Fresh) said that their groceries were healthier (68%) or as healthy as (23%) takeout or delivery meals.(8)
Amazon Fresh organizes its online storefront into food and other purchasing categories, which it features on its homepage (or home screen in the app). Just as the organization and presentation of items in a physical supermarket can influence shopper behavior, Amazon Fresh’s choices about what to display most prominently can also influence behavior. Amazon Fresh displays categories such as “Fresh Produce” and “Meat & Seafood” as menu items at the top of the screen and groups items by assorted labels, such as “Popular near you,” “Trending near you,” “Dairy, Cheese & Eggs,” “Household Supplies” and “Breakfast Foods.” The order, or prominence, of these categories is not consistent and appears to be dependent on a user’s history, location and other factors.
Amazon Fresh provides users with personal recommendations for items, although it is not clear how these recommendations are generated, and thus it is not clear if the recommendations bias users toward healthier or less healthy items. Amazon Fresh does not specifically offer a “healthy” category.(9)
Amazon Fresh facilitates home cooking by offering an integrated recipe service that connects ingredients in recipes to the online shopping cart.(10)
Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(11)
- Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then integrate those ratings throughout the user experience.
- Enable users to express preferences for how healthy they want their diet to be; align recommendations with those preferences; and provide users with feedback on how well their choices are supporting those preferences.
PHYSICAL ACTVITY
slight to moderate negative influence
While Amazon Fresh promotes home cooking, it also potentially deters customers from the physical activity associated with grocery shopping – especially if users are opting for the online delivery service over the in-person stores. Amazon Fresh allows customers to shop while sedentary, which can be detrimental to physical health. Note that users of online grocery delivery services typically continue to shop in person to some degree as well, so the effect is a reduction, rather than a substitution, in in-person grocery shopping. In Building H’s consumer research, nearly half (46.8%) of users of grocery delivery services (not specific to Amazon Fresh) also shopped in person more than twice a month.(12)
On the other hand, assuming that the grocery shopping leads to home cooking, cooking a meal certainly involves more physical activity than preparing ready-to-eat or takeout/delivery meals.
Sleeping
neutral to slight positive influence
Travel time has been shown to have a negative relationship to sleep time, so the online delivery service could improve sleep for users to the extent it cuts down on trips to the grocery store and time spent shopping.(13)
Additionally, if Amazon Fresh’s online delivery service cuts down on stress related to grocery shopping in-person (travel, finding groceries in-store, time crunches, etc), it could also reduce stress-related decreases in sleep quality.(14)
Engaging Socially
slight to moderate negative influence
Amazon Fresh’s online delivery service allows customers to stay at home while shopping, unless they opt for grocery pickup. As such, the service likely reduces the casual social interactions associated with trips to grocery stores. In Building H’s consumer research, 54% of shoppers (not specific to Amazon Fresh) rated these interactions positively, as compared with 9% rating them negatively.(15)
Unlike many other providers of online grocery delivery services, Amazon Fresh does offer a limited amount of in-person shopping. Amazon is, however, potentially reducing social interactions between employees and customers in its stores by introducing its Amazon Dash Carts(16) and Just Walk Out(17) automated checkout technology, which eliminates contact with a grocery checker, in selected stores.
- Offer family meal and party planning features to simplify the process of developing menus and ordering ingredients as a way to lower the barriers to hosting meals with friends and family.
- Experiment with adding “chat registers” for customers who wish to have friendly chats with checkout staff. (18)
Getting Outdoors
slight to moderate negative influence
To the degree that its online delivery service cuts down on trips to grocery stores and supermarkets, Amazon Fresh could potentially reduce time spent outdoors.
Notes
Amazon. Direct communication, November 13, 2023.
Julia Wolfson and Sara Bleich. Is Cooking at Home Associated with Better Diet Quality or Weight-Loss Intention? Public Health Nutrition, Volume 18, Supplement 8 June 2015, pp. 1397-1406.
Junxiu Liu et al. Quality of Meals Consumed by US Adults at Full-Service and Fast-Food Restaurants, 2003–2016: Persistent Low Quality and Widening Disparities. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 150, Issue 4, April 2020, pp. 873–883.
R. An. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Volume 70, Issue 1, January 2016, pp. 97–103.
Sharon Kirkpatrick et al. Fast-food menu offerings vary in dietary quality, but are consistently poor. Public Health Nutrition. Volume 17, Issue 4 (2014), pp. 924–31.
Lisa Powell and Binh Nguyen. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption among children and adolescents: effect on energy, beverage, and nutrient intake. JAMA Pediatrics. Volume 167, Issue 1 (January 2013), pp. 14–20.
Arpita Tiwari et al. Cooking at Home: A Strategy to Comply With U.S. Dietary Guidelines at No Extra Cost. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Volume 52, Issue 5 (May 2017), pp.616–24.
Steve Downs. A Survey of Modern Life: Food; Delivery Apps, Meal Kits, Groceries and Cooking Dinner. Building H on Medium. January 20, 2022.
Amazon Fresh website, accessed November 22, 2023.
Ibid.
Tawanna R. Dillahunt et al. Online Grocery Delivery Services: An Opportunity to Address Food Disparities in Transportation-scarce Areas. CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
Downs (2022).
Matthias Basner et al. American Time Use Survey: Sleep Time and Its Relationship to Waking Activities. Sleep, Volume 30, Issue 9, September 2007, pp. 1085–1095.
Torbjörn Åkerstedt et al. Predicting sleep quality from stress and prior sleep – A study of day-to-day covariation across six weeks. Sleep Medicine, Volume 13, Issue 6, June 2012, pp. 674-679.
Downs (2022).
Dilip Kumar. The next evolution of the Dash Cart: New features and expansion to first Whole Foods Market Store. Amazon News/Retail website, July 11, 2022.
Amazon staff. Amazon Fresh grocery store: Meet Just Walk Out shopping. Amazon News/Retail website, June 15, 2021
See Gabriel Geiger. Grocery Store Opens ‘Chat Registers’ for Lonely Customers. Motherboard by Vice, September 30, 2021.