“I See It, I Buy It”: How Fulfillment Became Retail’s Competitive Edge

In today’s retail environment, customer expectations move faster than most brands can. Five years ago, just 16% of shoppers expected same or next-day delivery. Now that number sits at 72%.

That shift, from convenience to baseline, was front and center in Kelsey Ayres’ keynote at CommerceNext. As Amazon’s Chief of Product Management and UX for Buy with Prime, Ayres offered a detailed look at how consumer behavior, fulfillment infrastructure, and marketing outcomes are becoming increasingly interconnected.

Ayres grounded her talk in a straightforward framework: to win in modern commerce, brands must deliver across three pillars - speed, predictability, and trust.

Citing Forrester research, Ayres noted that 80% of consumers now expect exceptional fulfillment and will abandon channels that can’t meet that bar.

The takeaway? Retail success now requires both multi-channel reach and multi-node fulfillment and the two must be tightly integrated.

Ayres pointed to examples like Steve Madden, Fauci, and Adidas, which have begun using Amazon’s logistics network to fulfill not just Amazon orders, but those from their own DTC sites and other channels. This shift toward adaptive commerce networks, logistics systems designed for flexibility, is helping brands serve customers wherever they shop.

One brand using Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) service reduced delivery time from 3–5 days to 1–2. That alone led to a 9% increase in conversion rates and an 8.9% boost in total sales.

Ayres made it clear: marketing can’t outperform if fulfillment can’t deliver.

She framed Amazon’s infrastructure as not just an internal advantage, but an external service brands can now plug into. With over $100 billion invested into its logistics systems over 20 years, including $30 billion in the last four, Amazon is offering what she called a “pick, pack, and ship” network that brands can leverage directly, even for their own websites.

That’s the premise behind Buy with Prime - a service that allows brands to add the Prime badge and Amazon delivery promise to their own DTC storefronts. Ayres cited an April 2024 survey showing that 40% of Prime members are more likely to make a first-time purchase from a DTC brand if they see the Prime badge. Among those who’ve used Buy with Prime, 95% said they’re likely to use it again.

Ayres didn’t dive into marketing measurement directly but her framing makes one thing clear: as brands diversify fulfillment channels, it becomes harder to know which investments are actually driving growth.

When a TikTok ad leads to an Amazon sale, or a Prime badge boosts DTC conversion, traditional attribution models fall short. Many tools don’t connect marketing impact across fulfillment channels, especially when the sale doesn’t happen on the brand’s primary site.

That’s where full-funnel, daily measurement becomes critical. (This is where a platform like Fospha fits, offering cross-channel measurement that doesn’t rely on pixels or siloed platform data.)

Measurement needs to capture not just clicks and conversions, but the halo effects that strong operational execution creates. Otherwise, marketers are flying blind unable to connect front-end investments with back-end results.

Ayres’ final point was subtle but significant. Amazon’s logistics tools aren’t just for marketplace sellers, they’re infrastructure for modern retail brands. And that infrastructure is becoming a competitive advantage when it enables faster, more trustworthy delivery across every channel.

For marketers, this changes the brief.

You’re no longer just planning campaigns. You’re optimizing commerce systems where every piece of the funnel, from awareness to delivery, must be measured and aligned.

Ayres asked the audience: Are you ready to meet the challenge?

The answer will depend on whether brands can bridge the gap between demand generation and demand delivery and measure the outcomes that matter.

ClickZ is a ClickZ Media publication