The e-commerce giant making changes amid intense competition
Amazon. com Inc. has recently come out explaining that it plans to cut prices on hundreds of items at Whole Foods stores this week. The decision comes with the e-commerce giant seeking to change the chain's high-cost image amid intense competition among grocers. The planned price cuts will affect more than 500 products and include a focus on produce and meat. This move comes after Whole Foods raised prices on select items in February. Consumer products will be mostly affected by this decision, as suppliers increased their prices because of higher transport and ingredient costs. The cuts in prices, which are said to occur on Wednesday (4/3), are some of the broadest since Amazon took over the grocer for nearly $14 billion in 2017. Prices throughout the store will be reduced by nearly 20% on select items. Through the reduction in prices, Amazon is seeking to keep up with other big food sellers, such as Walmart Inc., Kroger Co. and other grocers. With that, Amazon intends to open an entirely new line of of grocery stores independent of Whole Foods, as early as later this year. Several Whole Foods employees are expected to work throughout Tuesday (4/2) night and into Wednesday (4/3) morning, in order to change out tags to reflect the new reduced prices, as well as orange hanging signs to promote the cut prices. As discussed above, most of the reductions will come from produce and meat products, where organic-rainbow carrots, for instance, will be reduced by $1 , to $1.99 and the price of one selection of Black Forest ham will drop $3 per pound to $9.99. 
It was further made clear that very few workers in nearly 480 Whole Foods stores received information regarding the slices in the prices. Both Amazon and Whole Foods explained this was their third round of price cuts and that more could be on the way. At the start of last year (2018), Amazon began offering a 10% discount to shoppers who had a membership for Amazon's Prime subscription program. The two companies came together and further stated that Prime members would experience even greater savings than before at Whole Foods, with double the number of weekly Prime member deals and substantial discounts. Prime members are already familiar with free delivery, which Amazon has also begun to offer in more than 60 markets, to those members who shop at Whole Foods. Although Amazon hopes to continue making promotions for its Prime members, "a recent survey of 1,668 shoppers by Wall Street firm Wolfe Research found than 11% of Prime members said they shop at Whole Foods several times a month; by comparison, 65% of Prime members shop on Amazon's website at least that often". Wolfe further stated "lower prices would likely help Amazon draw more Prime members into its natural grocery chain". It is obvious that Prime members are at the heart of this decision by Amazon and with the recent reductions, the future looks bright for the two companies, which are likely to soon see a significant traffic boost in stores.
This article relates to the marketing concept because Amazon is not only helping to expand its target market, but it is also examining the impacts of its competitors in making significant changes. The obvious goal of the average shopper is to spend as little as possible on necessary groceries. Prior to these changes, Whole Foods was not a store where this task could be successfully completed. Customers were able to go to competitors, such as Kroger and Walmart, spend much less and receive much more. Now that these changes have taken place, I believe Amazon and Whole Foods will witness a drastic increase in customer traffic which, in turn, is successfully promoting Whole Foods and broadening the company's target market.
I chose to write about this article primarily due to the fact that I am a Prime member. Over the years I have purchased many things from Amazon, however, when the company purchased Whole Foods, I could never understand why a company like Amazon, who promotes selling items at cheap prices, charged significantly higher for those items that could be purchased for much less from nearby competitors. Personally, I shop at Sprout's Farmer's Market when I am purchasing items at the caliber to those from Whole Foods, due to their drastic lower prices. This, I believe, is the same opinion many shoppers have. I was very pleased to see this article come out and to see that Amazon was going to slash the prices in its Whole Foods stores. I feel that this will be a great success for Amazon and know that many Prime members, including myself, will have the desire to shop at Whole Foods more often.
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