Companies are working to replicate the physical, in-store sales assistance while shopping online.
Amazon’s online-only-sales model is in contrast to other retailers including Walmart, which has been aggressively pushing for the integration of sales assistants in its online stores.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has been steadily building a cadre of online sales assistants to compete with the likes of Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo devices. Walmart has also been giving several walmart coupon offers to its customers so that they through their website a lot more.
Amazon also sells similar items through the company’s marketplace site. The product, called Shopify, helps customers set up automatic payments. Customers can use the site to set up an invoice, invoice details and payment options and track their orders via Amazon’s payment gateway.
The system was developed as a trial run of Shopify’s online-only platform in Amazon’s Seattle offices, said a person familiar with the matter. The product launched last month with an initial six-week trial period, according to the person.
The company has expanded the service to two dozen countries, where Shopify’s platform has about 200,000 users, the person added. Amazon is trying to tap into shoppers’ recurring spending habits. Amazon has said in the past that shoppers like paying for items by using a device like its Echo or Echo Dot or in-app payments, which allow a device’s owner to pay for products in a digital wallet, which can then be reloaded at retailers.