Amazon expands same-day delivery after building fulfillment centers

Amazon expanded its same-day delivery in a handful of states on Tuesday after bolstering its fulfillment centers. 

Customers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Arizona; Orlando, Florida and Dallas, Texas now have access to receive up to 3 million items that the company has marked for same-day delivery. 

“We’re able to do so by storing need-it-today items in brand new facilities we built even closer to customers. These are first-of-their-kind buildings and serve as mini-fulfillment centers optimized for faster click-to-delivery speeds,” Amazon’s director of delivery experience Jon Alexander wrote in a blog post. 

The service is available for free for Prime members who spend over $35, or will cost $2.99 for delivery on orders under $35. Prime members pay an annual fee of $119 to access its services. 

The move comes as e-commerce players increasingly work to gain a leg up on one another. 

Amazon invested nearly $1.5 billion in its fourth quarter to expand its shipping service and said it will spend an additional $1 billion in its first quarter of 2020. 

Amazon had already made one-day shipping the standard among online retailers. The company rolled out free, one-day shipping on more than 10 million products last June and has two-hour delivery in select regions. Walmart followed and began offering one-day shipping and has since expanded the areas it serves. That was followed by Target, which announced its same-day delivery program to customers last June. 

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