• Campbell’s app enables Amazon’s Echo digital home assistant to provide recipe suggestions
  • Next step: intelligent packaging helps power virtual inventory of household consumables linked to auto-replenishment
  • Amazon’s internet-of-things announcements just the opening salvo in a new retail battle front 
It appears Amazon’s announcement the other day about the appliance manufacturers integrating into its Dash Replenishment Service to automate the reordering of a growing number of household consumables was only the opening shot on traditional brick & mortar retailers. The latest story details that Campbell’s has created an app for Amazon’s Echo, its voice-driven digital assistant for the home (see Will Siri Be Shopping at Your Store blog).
With the Campbell’s app, the user has only to ask Echo for recipe recommendations that the app provides, incorporating the user’s preferences, the weather (its cold and rainy out today, wouldn’t a hearty chicken soup taste good?), and what’s trending (what are other users seeking?). Apparently other consumer packaged goods manufacturers are pursuing a similar path in app development for Echo.
Its certainly not much of a stretch for the user (now shopper) to ask Echo to reorder Campbell’s soup from Amazon, and Amazon - with its increasing foray into fast delivery - able to bring it to the shoppers door in no time. While that capability is here today, imagine what tomorrow brings: Intelligent product packaging able to communicate, enabling Echo to maintain a virtual inventory of Campbell’s soup - and other consumables - around the home and auto-replenishing products. 
I can hear some number of traditional brick & mortar retailers scoffing that this day is a long way off, if it ever happens. These are probably the same retailers who don’t believe the shift to online shopping is worth worrying about. And these are the same retailers fixated on printing and distributing weekly ad flyers… though no one under the age of 50 reads the newspaper any more.
I suspect the latest announcements from Amazon are just the opening salvo in a fast-approaching battle aimed at the massive fast moving consumer goods retail sector. While these capabilities alone are impressive - appliances integrated to Amazon’s replenishment services, consumer goods brands serving up dinner suggestions through Echo - it is when they are combined with Amazon’s product logistics that they position Amazon to increasingly pull away from both its online and brick & mortar competitors.