Amazon’s ‘Buy With Prime’ Introduces Package Tracking, Expanded Returns

Glenn Taylor
·4 min read

Amazon is loading up its Buy with Prime offering with a new slate of features including package tracking, expanded returns capabilities and a 24/7 live chat customer service.

The Buy with Prime service enables U.S.-based Prime members to shop directly from brands’ online stores and use the features of the program without having to purchase from Amazon’s marketplace.

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Instead of relying on order confirmation emails, Prime members can now view and track orders placed on brands’ sites that offer Buy with Prime in the “Your Orders” pages in their Amazon account, both on Amazon.com and in the mobile app.

And while Buy with Prime already enabled partner merchants to offer free returns on eligible items, Prime members who check out using the service can choose from an expanded number of drop-off locations to return items without boxing up or labeling them. The perk was previously only available to orders made through Amazon.

Within 30 days of delivery, customers can choose to return a product at UPS locations, Whole Foods Market stores or Amazon Fresh stores by showing a QR code to a store associate and handing over the item being returned.

The move comes amid rising competition ahead of the holiday season, with e-commerce businesses like Shein, Temu and even TikTok entering the fold.

Ultimately, the new features aim to pull in fee revenue from shops outside of Amazon just in time for the peak shopping season.

“The enhancement of the Buy with Prime program is primarily commercial,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of research consultancy GlobalData Retail. “Amazon wants to attract more merchants and retain its existing ones, so it is innovating to make the service more valuable. Amazon makes money via fees from this and it also improves the efficiency of parts of its network.”

Amazon and Shopify forged a partnership in August that gave the latter’s more than 2 million merchants access to Buy with Prime, illustrating that the Seattle tech firm was willing to bring its technology to other sellers that aren’t fully embedded into its ecosystem.

But for Amazon, this brings a potential host of new revenue streams, and even an opportunity to scale its Prime membership, which totaled 200 million subscribers in 2021. Amazon hasn’t publicly revealed its membership count since.

According to Amazon’s sample study of 14 merchants, on average, three out of every four Buy with Prime orders are from new shoppers. The sellers experienced a 25 percent increase in shopper conversion with Buy with Prime.

“Amazon is conscious that consumers and sellers have more choice of where and how to do business, so it has to add more value if it wants to grow,” Saunders told Sourcing Journal.

While some of Amazon’s recent moves suggest the company is more apt to play with others, Saunders doesn’t think the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit case factors into Amazon’s thinking.

“Most of these initiatives were planned long before the case was filed and they have no real bearing on it,” Saunders said.

Amazon unveils ‘Titan’ mobile robot in San Antonio

The expansion of Buy With Prime comes as Amazon continues to build out its experimental robotics capabilities, with the deployment of mobile robot Titan aimed at taking on the heavy lifting at its fulfillment centers. In total, Amazon says it has deployed over 750,000 robots across its distribution fleet.

Titan’s first task will be to carry larger, bulkier items like small household appliances or pallets of pet food and gardening equipment across its warehouses.

Amazon’s “SAT1” fulfillment center in San Antonio, Tex., is the first to deploy Titan in its operations. The facility launched in 2013 to process larger, bulkier items and the use of this new technology can help modernize the site, supporting both workplace safety and efficiency.

According to a company blog post, Titan can lift up to 2,500 pounds, two times more weight than Hercules, the most broadly deployed robot within the e-commerce giant’s warehouse operations. The first Hercules model was deployed in 2017.

Titan integrates several technologies from previous mobile robots, including the battery and charging management solution from Hercules, and the computer vision, obstacle detection and user control systems from the Xanthus mobile robot. Titan also uses hardware components from Proteus to manage its operating system as it plans, executes, and interfaces with other technologies within the facility.

Amazon said it foresees “many” possibilities for using Titan going forward, including with the recently introduced containerized storage solution Sequoia, where it could transport inventory across our storage floor and bring it directly to employees.