Amazon takes on supermarkets as it branches into food

by Staff, brandrepublic.com, Tuesday, 18 April 2006, 10:00am,

NEW YORK - Amazon.com has started selling food on its website, offering customers multipacks of Campbell's Soup and Kellogg's cereals.

It has been a long time since Amazon just sold books, and the online retailer now offers more than a dozen different product categories from jewellery to electronics and DVD rentals.

Its US store will now offer 2,000 food lines, allowing shoppers to buy 12 packs of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup for $12.99.

As with books and CDs, delivery is free if customers are ordering goods worth over $25.

The addition of food has grown out of Amazon's health and personal care, which the online retailer likened to a traditional bricks-and-mortar drugstore.

"We look on this as a drugstore, and you are going to find food items in a drugstore," a spokesman for Amazon said.

Other food lines on offer include baby food, which according to a report in the Financial Times, is creating competition for US discount clubs such as Costco and the Walmart-owned Sam's Club.

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This article was first published on brandrepublic.com