# data[].attributes.body
twitter post 1

# data[].attributes.body
political cartoon 2

# data[].attributes.body
political cartoon 1

# data[].attributes.body
news article 4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SEATTLE - There is almost no aspect of retail that Amazon has not upended with online shopping. Now, the company is trying to computerize the experience of buying sandwiches and soda from the corner convenience store.

In the latest in its expanding set of experiments involving bricks-and-mortar retail stores, Amazon has created a small grocery store in Seattle that will allow customers to pluck drinks, prepared meals and other items off shelves and walk out without having to wait in a checkout line, the company said.

Amazon said on its website that a smartphone app and various other types of technology in the store had eliminated the usual bottleneck of cashiers and registers that typically stand between shoppers and the store exit.

For now, only Amazon employees can shop in the 1,800-square-foot store, which is on the ground floor of one of the company's new office towers in downtown Seattle. The company said that it planned to open the store to the public early next year and that it would offer chef-made meal kits with ingredients for quickly preparing dinners at home.

"Four years ago, we started to wonder: What would shopping look like if you could walk into a store, grab what you want and just go?" a narrator says in a video about the store concept, called Amazon Go, which the company posted online on Monday.

Amazon did not say what its expansion plans were for Amazon Go. If they are anything like what the company has done with its other bricks-and-mortar stores, new locations will open elsewhere slowly over time as Amazon learns how customers use the first one.

Amazon opened its first physical bookstore just over a year ago in a Seattle shopping mall. It has added others in the San Diego and Portland, Ore., areas and has said it will open new bookstores in Chicago and Boston.

It is also working on another grocery store concept that would allow customers to order food items online and then pick them up quickly by pulling into parking stalls. Two such stores are under construction in Seattle, according to documents filed with the city's planning department and people with knowledge of the effort who asked for anonymity because the plans were confidential.

Pia Arthur, an Amazon spokeswoman, declined to comment on the grocery pickup locations.

In the grand scheme of Amazon's business, analysts consider the retail stores to be an infinitesimal portion of the more than $135 billion in sales expected from the company this year.

But the plans reflect a growing recognition by the company that certain categories of shopping are unlikely to move completely online. In some cases, it is simply more convenient to buy items in a store or more attractive to browse for them on physical shelves.

"The way we think about it is the size of online retail is going to continue to grow dramatically but there will always be an offline option," said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. "They're trying to streamline and capture a portion of that offline experience."

Amazon still views technology as being useful in overhauling shopping in traditional retail shops. While the company has not said exactly how the Amazon Go stores will work, visitors will gain entry to them through a smartphone app. The company said the stores relied on a variety of technologies similar to those in self-driving cars, including those defined by buzzwords such as "computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning."

Unanswered for now are questions about how the stores would handle shoplifting and whether there would be employees on hand to check identification cards for alcohol purchases.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Amazon Cuts Checkout Line at New Grab-and-Go Store. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amazon Moves to Cut Checkout Line, Promoting a Grab-and-Go Experience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SEATTLE - There is almost no aspect of retail that Amazon has not upended with online shopping. Now, the company is trying to computerize the experience of buying sandwiches and soda from the corner convenience store.

# data[].attributes.body
news article 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Sears Holdings Corporation, which is projected to lose more than $2 billion this year, is in the retailing dead pool. As its prospects for a turnaround appear to grow dimmer, it may seem to be another morality tale for bricks-and-mortar retailers in the age of Amazon.

Yet it is a lesson that even Sears recognizes. Like other retailers, the company is scrambling to adapt to today's internet market. The question is whether it can do so before its cash runs out and the deal-making of its hedge fund chief executive, Edward S. Lampert is not enough to create more.

Everyone knows Sears, which has been around for over 130 years. It started as a catalog business, the Amazon of a century ago, where you could buy just about anything. And I mean anything. I lived for several years in a Sears catalog home, shipped to my town by Sears at the turn of the 20th century.

But in recent years, Sears has struggled. The company has lost over $9 billion in the last five years. Since 2011, it has shut more than 150 of its big Sears stores and over 350 Kmart stores, and it has just announced the closing of another 150 stores. Its revenue has fallen to a projected $25 billion in 2016, from $42.6 billion in 2011, according to Standard & Poor's Global Market Intelligence.

The outlook is grim for Sears. This month, the company said that comparable sales had declined by 12 to 13 percent over the holiday shopping season. Its stock price has fallen to $8.75, from a high of over $190.

Amazon, in the meantime, has soared. Its revenue is on track to reach $136 billion in revenue this year, according to S.&P. Global Market Intelligence, up over 30 percent from the previous year. Amazon has a market value of $395 billion as it dominates internet retail. And Amazon is on a roll, not just with sales but also with new products like the Echo that are must-haves, at least if you want your children to be screaming for Alexa to play Disney tunes all day.

Other bricks-and-mortar retailers are struggling as well because of the Amazon juggernaut. Macy's has announced store closures and a revenue decline. J. C. Penney has reported disappointing sales.

Still, Sears is a special case. Since 2008, it has been directly run and at times aided by Mr. Lampert.

Despite a decade of decline, Mr. Lampert - who is after all a person who can read numbers even if he seldom leaves his compound in Florida - still seems to believe in a future for Sears, whose headquarters is in the Chicago suburbs. What is he up to?

Mr. Lampert's hedge fund acquired Kmart out of bankruptcy and combined it with Sears. At first, it looked like a miracle as the stock and sales rose. But the financial crisis was grim for Sears.

Over the years, Mr. Lampert has managed the company directly - some say micromanaged - by dividing managers into segments and pitting them against one another. In addition, he has tried to refocus Sears onto the internet. This has involved the Shop Your Way strategy, in which Sears is to become an "asset light" company with "members" who can shop online and at more streamlined stores.

Mr. Lampert has been pushing this idea for a while. In his annual letter last year, he wrote glowingly about Uber and its ability to have almost "unlimited capital" despite large losses. Sears and other older companies were held to a higher standard, he noted. "Because of Sears and Kmart's longstanding history and cultural impact, we are targeted for criticism when our results are poor," he wrote. Mr. Lampert seemed to be saying that internet companies get a free pass, while Sears is subject to criticism.

Despite the conventional wisdom, though, it is not Amazon that is primarily to blame for Sears's plight. Sears is being squeezed by changing economies and technology. Shoppers go to Walmart for discount items or to Target for discount items with a touch of style. The high end stays at stores like Nordstrom. The middle is smaller and increasingly shops online.

(Sears, when asked to comment, referred to recent news releases.)

People love to hate hedge fund guys, and perhaps the biggest criticism of Mr. Lampert is that he acts like a hedge fund manager, slicing and dicing Sears to meet its fire hose cash-flow needs. And so Sears has been split up into multiple companies to create more value, but also to raise cash for Sears itself, like Seritage (Sears real estate), Orchard Supply Hardware. In the most recent example, Sears sold the Craftsman brand to Black & Decker.

Lots of financing transactions have included a rights offering and letters of credit and loans from Mr. Lampert's own hedge fund. The financial engineering has been extreme, while the turnaround has been slow to realize.

In all of this, Sears itself has declined in value while Mr. Lampert's net worth has fallen to $2 billion from about $3 billion.

So why doesn't he just try to liquidate the company instead?

After all, Sears has $5 billion in inventory alone, lots of real estate still to monetize and beloved brands like Kenmore and DieHard that it has yet to sell. This is a classic 1980s play; the breakup value is much more than that of the existing company.

One explanation is that it would be expensive to liquidate Sears. Shutting down 1,600 stores would be chaotic, and selling $5 billion worth of inventory at liquidation value would yield much less. Seritage, which mostly holds Sears property, would be significantly affected.

But another explanation is that whatever you think of the execution, Sears is onto something. Bricks-and-mortar retail is not going away- it still dominates online sales and most likely always will. But retail is fragmenting and shifting into branded stores.

Sears was once the Amazon of its day through its catalogs, and it successfully migrated to stores. Companies like Allstate, Dean Witter and Discover were spun out of Sears. Back then the company was everything to all consumers. Now, at a time when Amazon is everything to all customers, $24 billion in sales is still nothing to sneeze at, and surely some Sears stores are still profitable.

This is ultimately Mr. Lampert's strategy - leverage a huge ground footprint to extend into the internet. A ground footprint is valuable not just because people still mostly shop by ground but also as a delivery vehicle. Amazon itself is opening up some physical stores.

Here, Mr. Lampert is betting that Sears can transform itself by leveraging its ground footprint and streamlining it. It has invested in a newer, more streamlined store format selling appliances. The first of these opened in Fort Collins, Colo.

But that belies the question of whom Sears is marketing to: discount shoppers or a more upmarket crowd? In today's day and age it is impossible to be everything for everyone in a physical store when the internet is simply much better at it.

All of this must be done when Amazon or Walmart could buy the retailer for pocket change at this point. If Sears intended to dominate the internet, it should have started 15 years ago when it had the brand recognition to do so.

In the end, the problem with Sears may be that while Mr. Lampert may be sure of Sears's value, the public just isn't sure of where it stands in the hierarchy of retailers when a ground store selling everything just isn't what it used to be. No amount of Wall Street alchemy and deal-making can fix this problem.

Steven Davidoff Solomon is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. His columns can be found at nytimes.com/dealbook. Follow @stevendavidoff on Twitter.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Sears Sells Something for Everyone. And That's the Problem.. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sears Clings to Catalog Thinking in an Online World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Sears Holdings Corporation, which is projected to lose more than $2 billion this year, is in the retailing dead pool. As its prospects for a turnaround appear to grow dimmer, it may seem to be another morality tale for bricks-and-mortar retailers in the age of Amazon.

# data[].attributes.body
news article 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Amazon's new warehouse in Baltimore is a rare economic bright spot there, employing 3,000 people full-time in a city ravaged by poverty and a lack of opportunities for less educated workers.

And with Amazon's announcement Thursday that it plans to hire 100,000 new employees in the next 18 months, the Baltimore facility and at least 70 other Amazon fulfillment centers across the country stand to be among the biggest beneficiaries.

Fifteen miles away in the suburbs, all that is left of Owings Mills Mall is rubble, demolition having started in the fall, after the last anchor stores, Macy's and J. C. Penney, closed within months of each other.

The contrast between the two scenes is an example of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter termed "creative destruction," the inevitable process in which new industries rise and replace old ones.

But creation tends to get more press than destruction, and the announcement from Amazon is no exception.

The company's hiring plans are certainly good news. But to understand the forces roiling the American economy, it's key to remember that online retailing has destroyed many times that number of positions at malls and shopping centers across America.

That's not necessarily a bad thing over the long term. Greater productivity is essential for economic growth, and, according to the company, the 100,000 figure includes highly paid engineers and software developers in addition to hourly warehouse workers. But for people caught on the wrong side of that transition in the short term, it's the equivalent of an economic hurricane.

"There are huge benefits to consumers from Amazon," said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change. "But the workers they are hiring aren't the same ones being laid off."

Even since New Year's Day, the traditional retail sector has absorbed more blows. Macy's said last week that it would eliminate 10,000 positions, and the Limited announced this week that it would close all 250 of its stores, eliminating 4,000 jobs.

The Amazon announcement comes as the company is introducing automation that could one day cost jobs. It uses robots in many of its warehouses, though it says they work in conjunction with people instead of replacing them.

Moreover, with the rise of automation, the future of once-solid trades like truck driver and delivery worker is in doubt, threatened by the likes of driverless cars and drones. And that has prompted an intense debate among economists and some policy makers about just what society and especially government owes these workers.

One place to start, Mr. Katz said, would be for the government to provide more funding for retraining and also develop a wage insurance program to cover differences in salaries as workers migrate to new, lower-paid jobs from disappearing, higher-paid ones.

"The economy as a whole gains from creative destruction, but we don't put many resources into training displaced workers," he added. "That's a real problem, and in practice, we need to do much more."

The half-full glass in all of this is greater productivity - an economic force that has been otherwise lacking during the recovery from the Great Recession, said Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at J. P. Morgan.

Productivity in the retail sector, online and offline, jumped 3 percent in 2015 compared with a measly 0.8 percentage point for business over all, he said. The typical online retailer generates $1,267,000 in sales per employee versus $279,000 at bricks-and-mortar stores.

Along with making online retailers much more efficient, that difference also helps explain why Amazon is a stock market darling while Macy's and J. C. Penney are laggards.

"You can't complain about low productivity and then complain about job reallocation in the same breath," Mr. Feroli said.

Still, a lot of jobs are being reallocated in a fairly short time, in an economy that has only begun to pick up speed recently for many Americans.

Mr. Feroli calculates that if it were not for online retailers, of which Amazon is by far the biggest, there would be 1.2 million more retailing jobs in the United States. There are 16 million retail workers in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a figure that includes online sellers like Amazon and traditional stores.

In the last four years, traditional retailers have cut more than 200,000 jobs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm.

The seasonal bump in store hiring, a familiar economic story each fall, is also ebbing, according to Challenger. During the holiday shopping season last year, stores added 100,000 fewer temporary workers than in 2013.

"The number of jobs we are losing in retail outpaces the number being created in the sectors that are taking their place," said Andrew Challenger, vice president of the firm. For example, transportation firms and warehouses are hiring, but not as quickly as bricks-and-mortar stores are laying off workers, he said.

Many of the jobs included in the figure Amazon announced on Thursday had already been disclosed by the company, which routinely reveals how many people it plans to hire in different localities when it opens new fulfillment centers.

The company has become far more vocal about telling its employment story over the past half-decade, which is partly a reflection of the rapid expansion of its network of warehouses devoted to packaging and shipping products to customers. The expansion began in earnest around 2011, when Amazon began hammering out agreements with state governments to collect sales tax from Amazon customers in those states.

At the same time, Amazon decided to make fast shipping a priority, something possible only if it opened more warehouses closer to where customers live.

The 100,000 hires it plans for the next 18 months represent a 56 percent increase in the 180,000 full-time United States employees it had at the end of 2016. Amazon has more than 300,000 full- and part-time employees globally.

That attention could be politically beneficial for Amazon as Donald J. Trump assumes the presidency. Last year during the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump singled out Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, as having a "huge antitrust problem." Mr. Trump suggested that Mr. Bezos was using his ownership of The Washington Post to discourage political scrutiny of Amazon.

But Mr. Bezos was among a group of technology-sector executives who met with Mr. Trump last month, and after Amazon's announcement of its hiring plans on Thursday, Mr. Trump's press secretary said "the president-elect was pleased to have played a role in that decision."

Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, declined to comment.

Amazon has said that its employment figures alone do not capture its full effect on jobs. On Thursday, the company said its marketplace business, through which independent merchants sell goods on the company's site, sustained 300,000 additional jobs in the United States.

In the meantime, a new open-air shopping center is planned for the vast rubble-strewn site in Owings Mills, Md., where shoppers once flocked to Macy's and J. C. Penney. The demolition should wrap up by spring, although no date has been set for the opening of the new mall, nor have tenants been announced.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Amazon Will Add 100,000 Jobs as Bricks-and-Mortar Stores Turn to Rubble. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amazon to Add 100,000 Jobs as Bricks-and-Mortar Retail Crumbles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amazon's new warehouse in Baltimore is a rare economic bright spot there, employing 3,000 people full-time in a city ravaged by poverty and a lack of opportunities for less educated workers.

# data[].attributes.body
news article 1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For decades, a corner spot at the mall was a sure path to success for big American department stores like Macy's. Not anymore.

Those stores have been outmaneuvered by online retailers like Amazon and discount retailers like T. J. Maxx. And now the pace of change is accelerating, transforming the retail industry faster than expected.

The results? A rude awakening for some of the country's biggest retailers. And for malls, a reshaping that, in many ways, mirrors a growing economic divide.

Macy's said this week that it would cut more than 10,000 jobs as part of a previously announced plan to close 100 stores and cut other costs. And the long-struggling Sears Holdings said Thursday that it would close 150 more stores and that it had sold its nearly century-old Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker. They are the latest in a slow bleed of similar announcements in the past two years from rivals including J. C. Penney.

These changes are "happening at a tremendous speed," said Bernard Sosnick, a retail analyst at Madison Global Partners.

"It's putting pressure on all stores, best and worst, but the worst just don't have a place in retailing anymore as sales decrease," Mr. Sosnick said. "It's necessary to sacrifice them, shutter them, to help the others survive and stabilize sales."

The exits highlight the growing dichotomy between America's highest-end shopping centers, the type with Tesla dealerships and Apple stores, and those on the lower end of the spectrum, which are struggling to fill space and attract national brands. The stores being closed by Sears are not profitable. And Macy's chief executive, Terry J. Lundgren, said many of the stores it was closing were "no longer robust shopping destinations."

Green Street Advisors, which tracks the mall industry, said in a report last year that more department store closures "should ultimately result in a larger number of malls becoming irrelevant retail destinations."

Even among more successful malls, it is clear that department stores are far less important than they once were as they attract fewer customers.

While mall owners once relied on four or five department stores to serve as so-called anchor tenants, offering them cheap rent in exchange for reliable foot traffic, they may now simply need one or two department stores and otherwise seek anchors in off-price chains like T. J. Maxx, restaurants and movie theaters, Green Street Advisors said.

"Ten or 15 years ago, if a department store left a mall, it was really a problem for the developer," Les Wexner, the longtime chief executive of L Brands, which owns Victoria's Secret, told analysts and investors in November. "Now, many of the developers are trying to buy back the space from the department stores because they're an economic detriment and they can recycle that space."

The business of department stores has been attacked from all sides in recent years. Online, consumers can purchase directly from brands or on Amazon, which has invested heavily in fashion.

Offline, the chains have had to contend with discount retailers like TJX, the owner of T. J. Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods, which compete hard on price and brand names, as well as fast-fashion sellers like H&M and outlet centers. Department stores also face competition from beauty chains like Sephora and Ulta.

The new rivalries are particularly painful for those physical stores that fall in between selling heavily discounted goods and luxury products. The competition has really struck at the heart of some of the biggest department stores: Macy's made 61 percent of its sales from women's apparel, shoes, cosmetics and accessories in 2015.

"Everyone is carving away at different parts of the business," said Liz Dunn, the chief executive of Talmage Advisors, a retail consulting firm. "It's sad that these retailers that have this rent advantage can't seem to make it worth it."

Nowhere is this shift more evident than in apparel. Two years ago, annual sales at TJX eclipsed those of Macy's for the first time, as the company drew consumers to its relatively smaller stores with a treasure-hunt-like experience and brand-name discounts. TJX posted $29 billion in sales for the year that ended Jan. 31, 2015, while Macy's revenue was $28 billion, a gap that has widened since then.

Some of the money Macy's will save with its closures and job cuts will be diverted to its own version of T. J. Maxx, called Macy's Backstage, an effort akin to off-price chains like Nordstrom Rack and Saks Off 5th. Macy's, which operated 22 of the Backstage stores at the end of October, said it will open 50 more in the next two years. Many will be within current Macy's locations.

Other funds will go toward Macy's e-commerce efforts, which have been growing but struggle to make up for the pace at which physical stores have been tailing off - a common story among its rivals. The big chains are also working to make their better-performing locations more appealing. J. C. Penney recently teamed with InStyle magazine for salons, and Macy's has added spa treatments to stores and merchandise from mall chains like Finish Line, the shoe seller.

Still, the stores remain exposed to changing conditions. The real estate industry ranks malls with letter grades like report cards, assigning "A++" to the highest-end locations that make nearly $1,000 in sales per square feet and a "C" to those that generate one-third or less of that and are at risk of closing. Sears, Macy's and J. C. Penney, the biggest mall anchors, are also the most exposed to C malls, according to Green Street Advisors.

"The recognition now is that you can't have this long dragging tail and you've got to cut it off right now so you can concentrate on the best stores," Mr. Sosnick said. "These are the retailers that went into the earliest shopping malls, and so have stores in malls that have been degraded tremendously over time, and that's what you see being closed today."

By the time Macy's finishes closing its stores, it will have shuttered nearly 200 locations since 2010. Today, it has 730 stores. At the end of October, J. C. Penney had 1,014 stores, 90 fewer than five years ago, while Sears, which also owns Kmart, had 676 full-line stores with its name, a 192-location drop in the same period.

"Brick-and-mortar is not necessarily dead, but you need fewer stores to achieve the same amount of sales volume," Ms. Dunn said. "A lot of retailers need to shrink their store base, and that is tied to everything that's happened with digital and changing shopping patterns."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Department Stores, Once Anchors at Malls, Become Millstones. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Department Stores, Once Anchors at Malls, Become Millstones

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For decades, a corner spot at the mall was a sure path to success for big American department stores like Macy's. Not anymore. Those stores have been outmaneuvered by online retailers like Amazon and discount retailers like T. J. Maxx. And now the pace of change is accelerating, transforming the retail industry faster than expected.

# data[].attributes.body
video 3

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amazon to accept food stamps, taking on Walmart

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world of food stamps is about to go high-tech, and it may turn the grocery industry on its head. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is testing a pilot program this summer that will allow seven online grocery stores to accept food stamps, including online retailing giant Amazon.com ( AMZN).

# data[].attributes.body
video 1

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.entities[].name
Amazon 's Retail Revolution Business Boomers BBC Full

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New documentary goes behind the scenes at Amazon CNBC's "Amazon Rising" explores what keeps consumers clicking, and the workers who perform all the manual labor to fulfill orders. David Faber of CNBC reports for TODAY. Shopping online with Amazon.com http://shoppingonline24hours.blogspot.com Shopping online with amazon.com, where you can buy every thing from everywhere!

# data[].attributes.body
video 2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
www amazon com shopping online for books & music

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
http://www.amazon.com/ Shopping books music it's website homepage is shown in the video.. Amazon.com - Online service provider company Amazon.com, Inc. is an American international electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, United States.

# data[].attributes.body
Academic Source 1

# data[].attributes.body
graph

# data[].attributes.body
bye Wal-Mart

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Amazon is joining a pilot program in which it will accept food stamps from customers ordering and paying for groceries online - showing that it wants to appeal to lower-income shoppers, traditionally a key customer base for Wal-Mart.

Share story

For years, Amazon.com has targeted shoppers who can afford a $99 Prime subscription. The recent announcement that the company will accept food stamps from customers ordering and paying for groceries online shows Amazon also wants to appeal to lower-income shoppers, traditionally Wal-Mart's bailiwick.

Amazon is authorized to start the experiment this summer in New York, New Jersey and Maryland.

FreshDirect, Safeway, ShopRite and Hy-Vee are also joining the pilot program of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which last year provided more than $66 billion of help to 44.2 million needy Americans. Those grocers will also be implementing the pilot in Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Iowa. This will be the first time SNAP has accepted online payment for groceries.

Low-income shoppers are an intriguing target for Amazon, which has been trying with mixed success to disrupt the $800 billion grocery market. More than 80 percent of food-stamp recipients live in or near big cities, which are served by Amazon's vast network of warehouses and are home to the affluent and poor in close proximity. A truck delivering gluten-free chia seed bars and organic soy coffee creamer to Manhattan's posh Upper West Side can also cart a box of cereal, bread and baby food to low-income housing projects in Harlem.

"There are very few retailers who can serve the high- and low-end of the income spectrum," says Kirthi Kalyanam, director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University. "Costco customers are mostly affluent, and Wal-Mart customers are mostly low income. No one retailer has been able to bridge the gap. Amazon is uniquely positioned to go all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom of the customer spectrum."

Amazon's competition for urban food-stamp recipients includes convenience stores with limited inventory and high markups, providing Amazon an opportunity to stand out with its vast selection and low prices. The delivery program also lets food-stamp recipients use the benefit more discreetly than in a crowded store, where other shoppers can see how they're paying for their groceries. For now, it's unclear if Amazon plans to deliver the groceries to doorsteps, require pickup from central locations or leave that up to shoppers.

Amazon's push into groceries borrows a page from big-box competitors that sell food at or below cost to get people into the store with hopes that they also will buy higher-margin items such as clothing and electronics. People buy groceries frequently, putting a retailer in regular contact with the shopper and generating order volume that can help Amazon achieve the economies of scale crucial to making e-commerce profitable. Annual online grocery spending in the U.S. will more than double to $70 billion by 2021, estimates Cowen & Co.

"For Amazon, this continues to drive logistics and transportation costs per unit lower as these routes are combined with current routes to create more efficient transportation costs," says Neil Ackerman, a former Amazon executive who runs e-commerce initiatives at Mondelez International. "While this program is focused on groceries, it also allows for customers to buy in other categories that Amazon can deliver, like fashion and electronics."

Amazon is the largest of seven retailers chosen for the two-year food-stamps program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, sees access to online groceries as a benefit to urban and rural residents with limited shopping options. The pilot will let the agency work out any payment and security issues before allowing online food-stamp purchases nationally.

Serving food-stamp recipients would put Amazon on the front lines of eliminating "food deserts," urban and rural areas where healthy, affordable food options are scarce for those without cars.

Doing so provides a public-relations boost for a company better known for delivering a bottle of laundry detergent within an hour to a time-strapped shopper willing to pay $8 to skip a trip to the store. Amazon took heat last year after a Bloomberg investigation revealed that some predominantly minority neighborhoods in Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas and Washington, D.C., were excluded from Amazon's same-day delivery service.

Amazon has since expanded the service and filled the gaps.

"We are committed to making food accessible through online grocery shopping, offering all customers the lowest prices possible," Amazon said in an emailed statement. "Amazon's selection and competitive pricing can improve the grocery shopping experience for SNAP participants while helping them extend their benefits further."

The push is potentially bad news for Wal-Mart, which gets more than half of its $298 billion in annual U.S. revenue from grocery sales. The world's biggest retailer is already battling German-owned chain Aldi and other discount grocers for low-income shoppers. Now the world's biggest online retailer is chasing those shoppers too. "It's a whole new demographic and market for Amazon to tap," says Edward Jones & Co. analyst Brian Yarbrough.

Amazon in April introduced a $10.99-a-month payment plan for Prime, making it more appealing to those who can't afford a one-time $99 fee for yearly membership.

That helped Amazon increase Prime membership among those earning less than $25,000 a year from 6 percent in 2014 to 11 percent at the end of 2016, says Michael Levin, of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners in Chicago, which surveys Amazon shoppers.

"Some of these customers use food stamps," Levin says. "So Amazon would naturally want to accept them."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sorry, Wal-Mart, Amazon wants your food-stamp customers too

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amazon is joining a pilot program in which it will accept food stamps from customers ordering and paying for groceries online - showing that it wants to appeal to lower-income shoppers, traditionally a key customer base for Wal-Mart. Share story For years, Amazon.com has targeted shoppers who can afford a $99 Prime subscription.