Amazon Offers 2-Hour Shipping as Holidays End

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 4:27PM EST · Published Dec 24, 9:10AM EST

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Amazon Offers 2-Hour Shipping as Holidays End — © Thinkstock

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) wants to get one last slug of revenue before the holiday clock hits midnight on its way into Christmas. Its logistics systems make it possible for Amazon to do something other retailers can’t do. Amazon offers two-hour delivery until midnight.

The opportunity is only available to people who are members of Amazon Prime, and it includes $10 off some of the items shipped and several other discounts. The two-hour delivery service presses Amazon’s own products, like Fire tablets, and pushes them hard. They are among the most visible products for the Prime Now promotion

The program is a clever way to get desperate shoppers to sign up for Prime. It costs $9.99 a month, for which members get a combination of streaming video, photo storage, a music service and free two-day shipping. Outside analysts believe Prime members are much more likely to shop at Amazon regularly, and they are more likely to shop at Amazon than at other e-commerce sites. It is one of the most famous and widely regarded customer loyalty programs in the world.

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Much of the Prime Now service is for local restaurant and grocery store delivery. And the number of items available otherwise is highly limited:

Prime Now offers 25,000+ items across 25 categories, including household items, groceries, electronics, gifts, seasonal items, and more. Plus, get restaurant and local store delivery in select cities.

The service is also available in a very limited number of ZIP codes, all in and around big cities.

Prime Now is indeed for the desperate. Some people may pay well beyond their gift budgets when they have forgotten to buy a gift or have procrastinated too long. At that point, shoppers have two options. One is the brave malls and stores at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. and hope to find something on the shelves. This gives an advantage to retailers like Wal-Mart. The other is to join Prime and stay at home.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.