Online retail giant Amazon bought Whole Foods Market for a whopping $13.7 billion, but is the marriage good news for consumers?
"It was shocking really because I think this was a major game-changer for the grocery industry," said Eva Fry via Skype. Fry runs a grocery-price comparison blog.
"Other retailers are going to have to step up their game and innovate faster," she said.
Fry said even though Amazon and Whole Foods are very different companies, they both cater to customers' need for convenience.
"Certainly they're shopping at Whole Foods for convenience. I think that Amazon also provides that convenience with that one-touch, 'Buy Now' button, and so I do think it's a great marriage," she said.
Even though the move made headlines, Fry said the acquisition is not going to be a huge disrupter, immediately. After all, Whole Foods owns just over one-percent of the overall market-share for groceries.
Walmart, by comparison owns 18-percent.
Still, Whole Foods has more than 450 stores, and Amazon now has the potential for fast-delivery from those stores, as well as their many distribution centers.
"In the grocery space you can't just have an e-commerce model. It has to be a combined online and brick-and-mortar model. In order to have the scale, efficiency, be price-competitive," she said, "You've seen many companies go out of business because of the 'Amazon Effect.' [I'm] not suggesting that that's what is going to happen here, but I think that we'll definitely see prices go down."
