Amazon-Whole Foods Is Two Years Old. And?
The e-commerce giant has made some obvious-seeming moves, but still no groundbreaking progress in groceries.
At Whole Foods, still waiting on that supermarket revolution.
Photographer: Federica Valabrega/BloombergThis weekend will mark two years since Amazon.com Inc. announced it was acquiring Whole Foods Market. It was a thunderclap that demonstrated Amazon’s ever-growing ambitions and all but assured that e-commerce was about to rattle one of the last corners of retail to remain insulated from digital transformation.
By now, Amazon’s fingerprints on Whole Foods are clear. It has expanded grocery delivery and online ordering into dozens of Whole Foods stores, cut prices on select items and offered discounts for Prime members. Those pricing moves appear to have changed people’s attitudes. YouGov, which surveys shoppers about consumer brands, has found that Whole Foods’ value perception has improved meaningfully in the past two years, showing Amazon has chipped away at the “Whole Paycheck” reputation that had hurt the grocer as rivals perceived as more price-conscious, including Kroger Co. and Walmart Inc., embraced organic food.