Support our non-partisan non-profit newsroom 💜 Donate now

Super-fast delivery is the new game in town

Sam Harnett Dec 19, 2014
HTML EMBED:
COPY

Super-fast delivery is the new game in town

Sam Harnett Dec 19, 2014
HTML EMBED:
COPY

For about $8 in Manhattan, Amazon will have a bike courier deliver your groceries, toys, and toilet paper in under an hour.

John Morgan, who teaches at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, says Amazon can pull this off because of its sheer scale. Other companies tried and failed during the dot-com boom for this kind of instantaneous delivery, and a host of start-ups are now trying to get into the game – companies like Instacart and Uber.

But John Deighton, a Harvard Business School professor, says they are making a mistake by focusing on delivery, not product.

In the end, says Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, the success of super-fast delivery rides on an army of cheap contract workers. Bivens says a healthy labor market would make instantaneous delivery more expensive and a harder business model. 

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.