Accent MR Accent

Amazon Investment in Deliveroo Gets Provisional Go-Ahead

The CMA has provisionally cleared Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo after the takeaway delivery firm warned it could collapse because of the coronavirus crisis.

Stuart McIntosh, chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group, said “Without additional investment, which we currently think is only realistically available from Amazon, it’s clear that Deliveroo would not be able to meet its financial commitments and would have to exit the market. This could mean that some customers are cut off from online food delivery altogether, with others facing higher prices or a reduction in service quality. Faced with that stark outcome, we feel the best course of action is to provisionally clear Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo.”

We were happy to provide the customer research for the CMA during the course of its investigation. We used a mixed methodology approach to understand Amazon Prime Now and Deliveroo customer Online Convenience Grocery (OCG) shopping behaviour, drivers of consumer choice and how this behaviour might change as new service offerings enter the market. Three phases of research with Amazon Prime Now and Deliveroo customers were conducted:

  • Depth interviews to explore how the services are used
  • Cognitive testing interviews to test survey materials
  • An online representative survey of 3,372 customers who had recently used the OCG service

The research needed to understand the importance of different attributes of the OCG offerings and to understand the trade offs between these attributes and choices between actual and hypothetical future offerings. The survey therefore used a conjoint design to simulate the situation consumers are in when using OCG and to explore how choices might change as different forms of offer are provided.

The survey was conducted online with participants being invited to take part through email and SMS invitations.

You can read the fruits of our labour here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ea6dc55d3bf7f7b5530a7f5/AmazonDeliveroo_Merger_Inquiry_Research_Report.pdf