Amazon has slowly been introducing perks to its members. Earlier this year, it announced that Prime members who use its Visa rewards card will get 5 percent cash back when they shop at Whole Foods. It offered Prime members a special discount for Whole Foods shoppers on roses during Valentine's Day. It has also been rolling out a free delivery service of Whole Foods products for Prime members. All the while, Whole Foods has continued efforts that predated its sale to Amazon to make its operations more streamlined. Still, some of these efforts - like its move to centralize merchandising with some of its larger vendors - have faced resistance. Some brands have had concerns that those fees will be adopted by the industry more widely. The grocer held a summit last week at the Hilton Austin with roughly 200 of its suppliers to quell concerns regarding past and upcoming changes. At the summit, the grocer laid out several initiatives the grocer plans to make, including exclusive Whole Foods discounts for Amazon Prime members. It is touting those discounts as a way for brands to make the best use out of their promotional dollars. They will also no doubt strengthen Amazon's position on the grocery industry. Amazon's lurch into the grocery space has put pressure on other grocers to invest in technology, price and create their own "network" to compete as best they can with the marriage of Amazon Prime and Whole Foods. Walmart plans to expand its online grocery delivery service to roughly 800 stores this year, wiki.competitii-sportive.ro CNBC has reported. Albertsons plans to launch a service to cater to many of the small brands that might historically be sold nationally only at Whole Foods. It earlier this year launched Albertsons Performance Media, a platform to help brands better target their digital ads.
Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 517 million on June 30, 2020, feelingcutelol.com compared with 510 million one year ago. "This was another highly unusual quarter, and I couldn’t be more proud of and grateful to our employees around the globe," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "As expected, we spent over $4 billion on incremental COVID-19-related costs in the quarter to help keep employees safe and deliver products to customers in this time of high demand-purchasing personal protective equipment, increasing cleaning of our facilities, following new safety process paths, adding new backup family care benefits, and paying a special thank you bonus of over $500 million to front-line employees and delivery partners. We’ve created over 175,000 new jobs since March and are in the process of bringing 125,000 of these employees into regular, full-time positions. And third-party sales again grew faster this quarter than Amazon’s first-party sales.
Amazon’s top priority is providing for the health and safety of our employees and partners, and the company spent more than $4 billion in the second quarter on incremental COVID-19 related initiatives to help keep employees safe, provide additional compensation to our employees and delivery partners, and deliver products to customers. Amazon provided a one-time Thank You bonus totaling over $500 million to all front-line employees and partners who were with the company throughout the month of June. This benefit provides employees with up to 10 days of company-subsidized emergency backup child or adult care. Amazon introduced Distance Assistant to help keep employees safe by providing them with live feedback on their social distancing via a 50-inch monitor. Amazon made the software and AI behind this innovation available via open source so that anyone can create their own Distance Assistant at no cost and get up and running with just a monitor, computer, and camera. Amazon is collaborating with national medical care group Crossover Health to pilot Amazon Neighborhood Health Centers, which are new medical facilities available to Amazon employees and their families.
The centers will provide access to quality, convenient care while reducing health care costs for employees and Amazon. The pilot includes 20 Crossover Health branded and operated centers in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Louisville, Kentucky; Detroit, Michigan; and San Bernardino/Moreno Valley, California. Amazon donated more than $10 million of personal protective equipment, including 4.4 million masks and thousands of contactless thermometers, to Direct Relief and Feeding America. The masks went to over 200 of Direct Relief’s partner clinics and Feeding America’s food banks and agencies in 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Amazon Business delivered more than 200 million essential health and safety products to healthcare and government organizations in tens of thousands of locations across the U.S. Amazon Fashion partnered with food banks and schools to deliver more than six million meals to underserved families and vulnerable seniors in 25 U.S. Australia, Japan, Singapore, Spain, and the U.K. Amazon plans to deliver one million more meals by the end of this summer. This conte nt w as do ne by G SA Content Generator D emoversion.
Amazon Fashion teamed up with Boys & Girls Clubs of America to launch Camp Prime, offering families fun, safe, and easy ways to help kids stay engaged this summer, including a digital handbook full of camp-themed activities using items from around the house. Camp Prime is free and available to all, and Prime members can extend their experience with content from Prime Video, Prime Reading, and Amazon Music. Amazon also donated $500,000 to Boys & Girls Clubs to help dozens of Club locations offer kids summer activities, including filling "curbside camp" kits available for pickup from Clubs that remain closed. Amazon announced a $10 million donation to 12 organizations that are working to bring about social justice for and improve the lives of Black and African Americans. In addition, Amazon also matched 100% of $8.5 million in donations by Amazon employees, bringing total donations to these organizations from the company and its employees to $27 million.