Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods is 'a threat to everyone,' even restaurants 4:56 PM ET Thu, 24 Aug 2017 | 00:51

Amazon already has access to troves of consumer data. People can buy everything from books to furniture on its website. However, Amazon has one blind spot: grocery, said Mikey Vu, a partner at Bain & Company.

Jeff Bezos has struggled to disrupt the grocery industry like he has disrupted others. The bulk of Americans still prefer to buy their food at traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Buying Whole Foods could pry open a trove of consumer insight and data that Amazon has not been able to access on its own.

"A whole world of data has opened up to (Amazon) because their purchase of Whole Foods gives them a lot of interesting opportunities to figure out what you're buying, how you buy it and what you're going to need next," Vu said.

By 2025, customers at Kroger could be able to order groceries on an app while they eat and have a store clerk deliver them, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published this week. It will be "so easy" because Kroger will be able to predict what customers want, he said.

Wal-Mart also is working toward a similar goal. Earlier this week, it announced a partnership with Google that will allow Wal-Mart shoppers to link their accounts to Google Express and order through voice on Google Home or by shopping on Google Express. The end result will mean Google will eventually learn customers' purchase patterns.

These are only the beginnings of predictive grocery shopping.

If Amazon and Whole Foods could integrate data from sources such as social media, they could help recommend even more products, Vu said. For example, if a customer is eyeing recipes on Pinterest, Whole Foods could suggest ingredients that you could use to make them or other related products, like cookware or serving dishes.

"This is like your personal concierge. These things are happening slowly already," said Sharma, who was an executive at Wal-Mart, Williams-Sonoma and Apple before founding Narvar. "Based on marketing emails, they're already doing bits and pieces of that now by pulling all of your data, and continued innovation in cloud computing makes it faster and cheaper."

Of course, no one on the outside ever really knows what Amazon is planning. Its announcement that it was buying Whole Foods was enough to shock the business world.

Amazon teased some plans Thursday, but it did not divulge how long it would take to complete the integration of the point-of-sale system in Whole Foods stores that would unlock additional savings for Prime members.

"This is just the beginning — Amazon and Whole Foods Market plan to offer more in-store benefits and lower prices for customers over time as the two companies integrate logistics and point-of-sale and merchandising systems," the company said in a statement.

Aside from that, the world will have to wait to see exactly how Amazon will use its new toy.