Building H Index

Amazon Fresh

INDUSTRY

food

products Profiled

Amazon Fresh online grocery delivery service

Amazon Fresh grocery stores

H-Score

47

ranked 7th of 16 within food industry

ranked 19th of 37 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 approximately 25 locations in eight states.

product usage

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.

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.(1-5) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(6)

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 (67.9%) or as healthy as (23.2%) takeout or delivery meals.(7)

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. At the time of review, “Fresh Produce” was typically the first of six horizontal buttons one could use to present items, but it was not a category that was featured in the rows of items featured prominently on the homepage. (These categories typically included labels such as “Popular near you,” “Trending near you,” “Dairy, Cheese & Eggs,” “Deli & Prepared Foods.”) 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.(8)

Amazon Fresh facilitates home cooking by offering an integrated recipe service that connects ingredients in recipes to the online shopping cart.(9)

Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(10)

opportunities:

Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then consider using such ratings to give users feedback on overall healthfulness of their orders and/or propose healthy substitutions for less healthy items.

PHYSICAL ACTVITY

slight 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.(11)

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

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.(12)

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.(13)

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.(14) 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 experimenting with its Just Walk Out automated checkout technology, which eliminates contact with a grocery checker.(15)

opportunities:

Offer 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.(16)

Getting Outdoors