Amazon.co.ukLooks like Tesco, Sainsburys and Waitrose are in for some competition in the online grocery market. Today, Amazon.co.uk has launched its Grocery Store (www.amazon.co.uk/grocery) "offering free delivery on thousands of great value household, niche, ethnic and international products from big brands such as Kraft, Nestle, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, and international brand suppliers Eurofoods, Tazaki, and Bespoke".

Curious at the prospect of the largest online retailer moving into the groceries department, I had a quick look around and there are quite an impressive array of goodies you can buy from herbs and spices, dog food and fresh fish and meat to beer (which includes several brands from back home in SA including Castle lager, Castle Milk Stout and even Hansa Pilsener and a lot more I've never heard of), wine and champagne.

As I suspected when I read the press release, Amazon isn't selling these products themselves. Instead they're just allowing resellers to take advantage of Amazon's huuuuuge global name and customer base and system to do all the leg work. Oh yes, and you can even use Amazon's iPhone app to do your shopping whilst on the train home from work.

This is an interesting move from Amazon, and given it's not actually them selling the products directly, I don't think it's likely to fail and disappear any time soon. It will however be interesting to see if and how Tesco, Sainsburys and the other UK supermarkets react to this news. It would also be great if mysupermarket.co.uk were to add Amazon to their price comparison tool.