The Daily Parker

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Amazon and Whole Foods

One week after Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods Market, what have we learned? Mainly that Amazon is great at marketing:

Amazon-owned Whole Foods wasted no time in reducing prices on certain food items across the store, including avocados, tomatoes, bananas, ground beef and eggs.

A few examples: At a Whole Foods in Evanston, a dozen white eggs went from $3.39 to $2.99; New York strip steak, from $18.99 a pound to $13.99; and organic bananas from 99 cents a pound to 69 cents.

But some analysts say the price cuts were mostly about creating buzz. Gordon Haskett Research Advisors, a New York-based market research firm, compared 114 items before and after the announced changes at a Whole Foods store in New Jersey and found an average price decline of only 1.2 percent, with 78 percent of the items unchanged from the previous week.

"As Amazon integrates Whole Foods' supply chain and distribution into its existing infrastructure, I think Prime members will become more willing to try Amazon's grocery platform, with the endgame being a higher Prime pricing tier. Still, I believe it will take some time before we can define the acquisition as a success," [said R.J. Hottovy, an analyst with Morningstar, a Chicago-based market research firm].

I went there Monday (see photo above), and saw some items marked down but otherwise not much changed. I'll be watching closely.

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