Amazon is always looking for ways to improve their service to their customers and make their huge range of products more available to the masses. First there was Prime and their Kindle tablet range, and now Amazon are taking it one step further.
Using the massive amounts of data Amazon hold about their customers’ browsing and buying habits, Amazon plan on shipping items they think you’ll purchase before you order them.
The information comes as a result of a new patent for “anticipatory shipping”, which allows Amazon to send items to shipping hubs in areas of the country where it believes the item will sell well, based on purchase history and search trending. The move will inevitably reduce shipping times by bringing the product closer to the customer.
Amazon Pre-Purchase Shipping
Determining exactly what products will be shipped to consumer areas before the purchase button is pressed will be based on a variety of mechanisms from previous searches and purchases, to wish lists, and even how long a user’s cursor hovers over an item online.
Amazon are said to even go as far as to load products onto trucks and have them “speculatively shipped to a physical address” without having a full address of the recipient. Amazon sees the risk of increased returns and unwanted deliveries as a small price to pay for those majority of orders were the method will work. Plus, Amazon seem willing to take the hit, stating in the patent that “delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill.”
As for when this shipping madness will commence is yet unclear, or if Amazon are even considering implementing such tactics, as opposed to just securing the patent. It’s for sure this craziness has been heavily researched by Amazon and there’s method behind the madness for doing such a thing.
But let us know what you think in the comments section below. Sure Amazon will decrease their delivery times, but will it be worth the various unnecessary deliveries, scattered stock, and wasted manhours keeping track? If a company can pull it off, then it’ll be Amazon.