Boardroom Talk
Boardroom Talk – An online invasion will bring pain for many of SA’s retailing stalwarts
The continued improvement of the Amazon steamroller has relevance for South Africa’s non-food retail sector, which has only recently started to feel the impact of online competition.
By Alec Hogg
On the latest quarterly results earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors the operation highlight of his group's past three months was a 20% drop in the "number of touches" of a delivered package and a 19% reduction in "miles travelled to deliver packages"—incredible numbers for a business which now delivers 1.6m packages daily.
Jassy said this was a big deal because it speeds up the time between when a customer clicks and when purchases are delivered. To whit: "When we make faster delivery…customers purchase more often, not just a little higher, meaningfully higher."
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