Amazon, which continues to invest heavily in rapid-delivery operations, is touting how much the company has improved fulfillment performance during the first half of 2024.
Amazon reported it has delivered more than five billion Prime items on the same or next day globally so far this year, declaring it increased delivery speeds by 30% year-over-year.
Amazon pointed out its accelerating delivery speeds boost customer satisfaction and the attractiveness of Prime membership, and it helps small- and medium-sized businesses succeed on its marketplace. The company delivered the majority of the five billion-plus items on behalf of independent sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon. More than 60% of sales completed on the Amazon marketplace come from independent sellers, the company added.
In the U.S., Amazon offers more than 300 million items with free Prime shipping compared to one million such items when the membership program launched in 2005, the company maintained. It added tens of millions of its most popular items are available with free same-day or one-day delivery.
Amazon indicated several reasons for faster delivery:
- Expanding its same-day delivery network, now offering the service in more than 120 U.S. metropolitan areas.
- Regionalizing its fulfillment network to shorten delivery distances.
- Leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms to predict product demand and improve inventory placement.
The combination of machine learning and regionalized inventory allows Amazon to ship more orders from a single local site by placing the right products closer to customers so it can fulfill orders quickly, the company indicated. In scaling the effort during the first half of the year, Amazon increased the average number of items per box in the U.S. versus the same period in 2023, which reduced the number of required deliveries for these items, according to Amazon.
In the company’s first quarter conference call, Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, said faster delivery times have another important consequence as getting items to customers quicker results in customers choosing Amazon to fulfill their shopping needs more frequently. He said Amazon can see the effect, including the speed with which the company’s everyday essentials business has been growing, as well as the continued increase in Prime member purchase frequency and total spend.
