Amazon Primes Whole Foods for More Visitors

Starting this week, Amazon will lavish its most loyal customers with benefits and more when they shop at Whole Foods, the high-end grocery chain it's buying for $13.7 billion, according to Bloomberg.

People who already pay $99 for Amazon Prime’s free shipping, streaming music and video will have another reason to renew each year: cheaper organic avocados, eggs and chicken. Tying Prime membership to grocery buying habits plays squarely into Amazon's strategy of selling all things to all people. While likely boosting Prime's membership rolls, it could also induce a broader range of customers to stop more often at Whole Foods.

Every supermarket and drugstore hands out loyalty cards or asks customers to sign up and shop more. Mostly customers ignore these when deciding where to buy. Not Prime customers. Wall Street analysts once fretted about the cost to the company of Prime’s free two-day shipping. Now it’s the goose that laid the golden egg, and Amazon wants it to nest right next to Whole Foods cage-free brown eggs.

About 60 percent of Whole Foods shoppers are already Prime members, CIRP estimates. This still leaves millions of new members to lure through those new in-store deals and the loyalty program. But the biggest potential gains will come in Whole Foods stores.