Amazon's Sprawling Grocery Business Has Become an 'Expensive Hobby' With a Cloudy Future

Amazon has spent almost three decades perfecting the art of bringing everything imaginable to your doorstep in the shortest amount of time, at the lowest possible price. By almost any measure, it's been one of the greatest corporate successes in history. But despite Amazon's unquestioned dominance in e-commerce, one giant market has proven particularly vexing: groceries. From a report: Amazon has introduced a dizzying array of services -- Prime Now, Fresh, Go and others -- in its effort to become a giant in the $750 billion U.S. grocery market. In 2017, it spent $13.7 billion to acquire Whole Foods, a price tag more than 10 times higher than Amazon had paid in any prior deal. Still, it's just a niche player in the industry. As of mid-December, Amazon.com and Whole Foods accounted for a combined 2.4% of the grocery market over the past 12 months, while Walmart controlled 18%, according to research firm Numerator. Amazon's delivery services have struggled to stand out in a crowded field, while the Go automated convenience stores have been deprioritized, according to people familiar with the company's strategy.

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