Category Archives: oud
Amazon.com Expands Same-Day Delivery To 11 New Metro Markets
E-commerce leader Amazon.com ( AMZN ) announced Wednesday that it was expanding its free same-day delivery to 11 additional metro areas and expanding coverage in several other major markets. Free same-day delivery is a perk for Amazon Prime subscribers, the company’s loyalty program. Prime costs $99 a year, for which users get such other perks as free video streaming and free two-day shipping where same-day delivery isn’t available. With same-day delivery, orders placed before noon arrive before 9 p.m. the same day. Afternoon orders will arrive the next day, the company said in a press release Wednesday . Prime has more than 50 million members, some analysts say, and is a key driver in the e-commerce giant’s explosive growth. Amazon hasn’t disclosed its Prime membership numbers. Amazon says that its same-day delivery option is now available in more than 1,000 cities and towns in the U.S. “Prime was developed to make shopping on Amazon fast and convenient, and millions of members have used Prime free same-day delivery to make their lives even easier,” Greg Greeley, vice president of Prime, said in the release. “We keep making Prime better, and as our operational capabilities grow, we will continue to invent and expand delivery options that customers love.” The new markets are Cincinnati; Milwaukee; the North Carolina cities of Charlotte and Raleigh; the California cities of Fresno, Sacramento and Stockton; Richmond, Va.; Louisville, Ky.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Tucson, Ariz. Amazon stock was up nearly 2%, near 597, in afternoon trading on the stock market today . The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 77, where 99 is the highest. Amazon and its dominant position in the market have left other e-tailers such as eBay ( EBAY ) and Wal-Mart ’ s ( WMT ) Walmart.com struggling to gain traction. EBay announced Tuesday that it was launching a new shipping supplies store that will provide eBay-branded packaging to sellers using the site. Startups such as Jet.com and Alibaba ( BABA )-backed ShopRunner are also taking aim at Amazon’s dominance.
Political Drama Draws Alphabet-Owned Google Into Consumer Surveys
Google is using the interest surrounding the 2016 elections to vault more deeply into the political polling arena with its own polling service. Alphabet ( GOOGL ) subsidiary Google is offering its survey products to presidential and congressional campaigns — and getting them into newsrooms, according to The Hill. Google collects its data through survey boxes that appear online before people can read a news article, as well as through an application for the Google Android operating system that provides credits to the Google Play store to people who answer questions, The Hill reported. The product is known as Google Consumer Surveys. Nielsen Holdings ( NLSN ) also remains a major player in the survey industry. Online polling has long faced skepticism, however, since most Internet polls rely on self-selecting groups of respondents. Getting a representative sample including the elderly or poor, for example, can be difficult since they are less likely to have Internet access and would be excluded from sampling as a result. On the other hand, getting voters to participate in phone-based polling is becoming more difficult. The rate of people responding to phone surveys had already fallen to less than 10% in a 2012 Pew study , according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Google specifies that its sample is representative of the population on the Internet, according to the report. Google makes money from the surveys, but its data work also keeps the search company’s brand prominent in the political conversation. “As we started to get ready for the 2016 cycle, that’s when things really started to pick up a bit on my side,” Karen Sheldon, the Google account executive on the sales team for the product, said in The Hill’s report. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have both used Google’s tools for political polling, and the company has struck a longer-term partnership with the Independent Journal Review, a right-leaning news website that has attracted attention for its viral videos starring presidential candidates, The Hill said. Other Silicon Valley companies focusing on political polling include SurveyMonkey, which The Hill said hired Mark Blumenthal, a well-respected pollster and writer, away from the Huffington Post in October. SurveyMonkey has a partnership with NBC News to produce polls for the 2016 election. Alphabet stock was up a fraction in early afternoon trading in the stock market today , near 764. Image provided by Shutterstock .