After years of Amazon drubbing Wal-Mart in online retail space, the brick-and-mortar chain is finally beginning to catch up, as its huge investment in Amazon’s biggest challenger so far Jet.com starts to pay off, though in small measures.
A colossal fusion of a department store, a grocery store, a supercentre, and a game show, Jet.com, as an online shopping platform might sound a little too complicated to engage with in the first place, but that’s also what makes shopping on Jet.com, an amazing experience.
Jet takes special pains to bring the best of both the worlds: making shopping experience not only smooth but also fun – incorporating solutions that cover the most common complaints and grievances of online shoppers.
A Johnny-come-lately to the eCommerce space, Jet.com was introduced in July 2015. It brought with itself the potentials of a unique pricing engine that saves customers money in diverse ways. Offering a wide assortment of products from fresh groceries to health & beauty, to apparels and electronics, Jet associates with hundreds of merchant partners that can offer competitive prices on competitive products, cross-selling basket comprising a combination of competitive products, complementary in nature and commonly bought together, together with delivery of products wanted by consumers.
What Jet.com is all about?
It’s been approximately over a year since Jet.com launched onto the eCommerce scene. And during this relatively small period of time, Jet.com has covered quite some ground, including letting go of its initial membership model, providing free shipping on orders greater than $35, expedited 2-day delivery model for everyday household items, and on top of all this game show style shopping experience further sweetens the deal. As a Jet customer, you can crack new deals and discounts when you waive your right to return an item, buy multiple quantities, pay with a debit card, or add smart items to your online carts to stack savings.
In principle, Jet’s business model seems fail-proof to arrest the attention of free shipping, savings-hungry, customers’. So is Jet.com charting new waters with shoppers? Let’s see, how shopping experience on Jet.com stacks up against online retail behemoth, Amazon.
No membership fees
Jet is open to everyone. Initially, a subscription membership was it necessary to enjoy the savings, which it later ditched, rolling out the savings benefits, fast delivery, and world-class customer service anyone who wants to shop on the site, without paying any kind of membership or annual charges.
In contrast, Amazon’s lowest membership fee is $99 for a yearly subscription into the Prime program.
Two day delivery for all purchases
Shopping privileges are open to all Jet.com shoppers with orders over $35, with no membership fees required. The products reach the customers within two business days, provided they place their order by 2 PM in the time zone to which their items are being shipped.
Prices drop as you shop
Using Jet’s real-time savings engine, customers can realize incentivized pricing as they continue to interact with the site, and add more products to their cart, giving them a game show like feel.
The bargain hunters are prompted to add a selection of complementary items to their cart, and then they’re compensated even more in terms of savings. So as a customer, once you have a product in your shopping basket, you can start adding products with the tag, which in turn helps in lowering the price of goods in your cart. It goes without saying, the more you purchase, the more you’ll be incentivized. But then you are never pressed to make purchases that are not in tune with your needs.
For example, when a shopper selects something like toothpaste to place into his/her online shopping cart, then it helps him/her save money on everything from cereal to paper towels. They’ll see that they could opt out of their free returns, doing which, they’ll realize a lower price on the product. As the buyers interact with the site, and make purchasing decisions based on the prompts, they’ll see a drop in their purchasing cost in real time. What’s more, the shoppers can choose to pay by debit card to save more.
No need to pay a Pantry penalty
Unlike Amazon, Jet.com does not make it obligatory for its shoppers to pay an extra fees to purchase common household products and grocery items. For instance, if a customer wanted to buy kitchen related products on Amazon, it would incur additional cost as they would need to subscribe to Amazon’s Pantry program.
However, while all of these are game-changing features of Jet.com, yet it remains a fact that Amazon is a retail behemoth with legendary customer services, making it an extremely hard competitor to beat. None the less, Jet is definitely a new marketplace, and an alternative that’s not easy to ignore!
