As the online retail giant Amazon fails to make a profit with its billions of revenue, they are reportedly looking to a new way to recoup their money.
Some time ago, online shopping was relatively unheard of by most, untrusted and unsupported in an era where brick and mortar stores were still the place to be and before the recession claimed our favourite high street stores. In came Amazon, backed by some smart business practices, fast shipping times and a brand name as familiar as the life sustaining rainforest it’s taken from. But somehow, despite the ubiquitous sales service making billions on our purchases each year, Amazon struggle to make a profitable dime, which is, perhaps, why the online retailer would now like to ship products to you before you’ve even ordered them.
While Amazon’s ‘Prime Air’ drone concept from a few months ago is unlikely to come to fruition any time soon, this suggestion, from The Wall Street Journal, could be in place soon. It seems so due to Amazon registering a patent describing something called ‘anticipatory shipping’. How this pre-emptive shopping service would work is that by using their highly accurate and Oracle-like Wish List recommendations, Amazon can ship products to their ‘hub’ warehouses’ near your home, ready for the time if/when you order them as they predicted.
The obvious benefit in this is that it drastically cuts the shipping times that you wait to receive your products, meaning that while Amazon Prime Air’s premise of delivering things via drone in 30 minutes or less may not be a feasible reality, receiving them in a few hours via the traditional truck-to-door method rather than a few days seems like a good trade off for the interest of high tech gadgetry. Too, Amazon’s patent also suggests that anticipatory shipping could result in freebies, of the official, rather than the ‘we accidentally sent you something but don’t worry about sending it back’ kind, explaining that “Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill.” But even so, the likelihood of things going wrong and orders (and wish lists) being mixed up still remains, especially if your wish list is in some way influenced by your buying of gifts that you, yourself would not be interested in, or by the fact that someone else (be it a friend, a family member or whoever) may have used your account.
But with all this in mind, Amazon’s new idea does sound like a good, if not incredibly interesting one, so we’ll keep you posted once we know more.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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