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Amazon: We Can Ship Items Before Customers Order
An anonymous reader writes "The WSJ is reporting that Amazon has obtained a patent for 'anticipatory shipping,'' and claims it knows its customers so well it can start shipping even before orders are placed. The technique could cut delivery time and discourage consumers from visiting physical stores. In the patent document, Amazon says delays between ordering and receiving purchases 'may dissuade customers from buying items from online merchants.' Of course, Amazon's algorithms might sometimes err, prompting costly returns. To minimize those costs, Amazon said it might consider giving customers discounts, or convert the unwanted delivery into a gift. 'Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill,' the patent said. Considering the problems that can arise when shipping something a customer did not order anticipatory shipping has the potential to backfire faster than an Amazon drone can deliver."
Well, as long as they will not bill me before I have ordered I have no problems with this...
- "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
Dood! Like wouldn't it be like awesome if we could like invent this like really cool time machine and like go to the future to see like what people have bought, and then like go back to when these people like sat down at their computers to think about buying something, and like it shows up right then! They'll like think its like magic!
Dood! that's frikken awesome! Now where's my goddamn Fritos!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Incredible, it turns out my algorithm actually works!
I seem to recall McDonalds started doing this 20 or 30 years a go, although obviously not to the level of analyzing the orders of individual customers. But basically they studied patterns of how much of each menu item is ordered, parsed by location and time of day, so that when you walk in the Filet o' Fish you're about to order is already cooking.
Other fast food vendors have since followed suit, as have big box retailers.
It's basically a specific application of "just in time" inventory practices that's being adapted to Amazon's business model. Definitely smart, but I'm not sure it should be patentable.
#DeleteChrome
People say that, but they never cite anything.
39 U.S.C. Section 3009
Or, an explanation in layman's terms by the USPS.
Every brick & mortar store in existence stocks its shelves with items they hope people in the local area will buy, before the people buy them. You can patent that?
Out in stores before the movie is finished!
On a regular basis I hear from people exhorting me to abandon Amazon.com and only buy books at my local bricks and mortar retailer.
Although quaint, the truth of the matter is that my local bookstore a) doesn't have what I want, when I want it. b) may or may not be able to order it reasonably quickly and c) has higher prices.
Amazon has succeeded where most other on-line retailers have failed because of one thing: they are very, very good at giving customers what they want. They mastered long-tail retailing before most people had heard the phrase. I can return to their web site after a year or two and they'll usually manage to actually suggest items that I would want to purchase.
Plus, and this is the big plus, they manage to make it really, really easy to find what I want and buy it.
Plus, and this matters at least as much as service, I actually trust Amazon to give me good service, not pass my credit card number on to random Russian mafia, and to take care of me if I have a problem.
(OK, the trust issues are pretty subjective, and for sure someone will jump up to say "Yeah, but this happened to my buddy one time...," but that's the point of trust: if you've got it you can move past the glitches that happen.)
(And given the seemingly endless string of credit card data breaches, it's probably good to not trust Amazon with that info either)
Three Squirrels
With predictive algorithms and loads of local warehouses, which they already have or are building, they can already give you same day/next day delivery.
What are they going to do? Predict to the exact minute you order something, a day or two in advance, and have the package arrive within the hour of order? That is the only way they could do better than they are already doing.
And it seems to me, if you are going to try this predictive ordering, you put the merchandise on the trucks, but do not actually deliver it that day unless you get the order before drop off. It would not cost any more money to put a few boxed of popular good on trucks, and drive them around all day, and update the drivers schedule on the go with new orders. You do not even have to predict individual people, just groups, which is actually doable and easy.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Is The FTC a credible enough source for you?
Q. Am I obligated to return or pay for merchandise I never ordered?
A. No. If you receive merchandise that you didn’t order, you have a legal right to keep it as a free gift.
Amazon is merely pushing the tendrils of predictive modeling down a level in their supply-chain. No, they're not going to actually deliver something to you before you order it. But experience tells them, through predictive modeling, that someone in your immediate neighborhood is likely to order more boiled peanuts in the next day or so, so they simply box them up, put them on a truck and once that truck gets to your neighborhood, they lie in wait. Sure enough, Bubba Hatfield, your neighborhood transplant from the land of dixie, gets him a hankering for some more boiled peanuts which, for some reason, they never have on the shelves in the local grocery store. He'd really rather buy some off the shelf at a local store, on account of how bad his craving is, but knowing there's some boiled peanuts on the way will help salve his itch a little, so he fires up his browser and finds him some of that bliss in a can. Now, what to his wondering eyes does he see? Under delivery options, there's a new 'IMMEDIATE DELIVERY' option for just $5. What? Are they going to use a rocket to send a can of boiled peanuts all the way from wherever the hell Amazon is all the way out here? He skeptically reads the 'more information' link about this new delivery option. All it says is they guarantee delivery in 30 minutes or less, or his peanuts are free. What the hell? Yeah, an extra $5 for a can of peanuts is ridiculous, but the thought of being able to eat some of those heavenly morsels within just a few minutes is too much. He selects IMMEDIATE DELIVERY and punches the buy button. The friendly Amazon truck, which just happens to have boiled peanuts among its cargo, adds Bubba's address to its current route. In 27 minutes, 30 seconds, an incredulous Mr. Hatfield is gazing, teary-eyed, at a can of purest dixie delight right there in his hands.
Hasn't this already been done by stores which carry items I might buy in their inventory, so that when I come in, I can buy things right there and then? They anticipate what I will buy, and have it on the shelf.
How is something like this worthy of a patent!?
No, the law hasn't changed at all. But that's not what they're referring to here. Amazon ships the item to a local dispatch point, and holds the final leg of the shipment until the last possible minute. If that final order doesn't materialize, Amazon is being charged for the charge to the local distribution point (and back).
"For legal reasons, the trucks are always rolling!"
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Just think of all the free mail and e-mail you get without ever asking for it. More! Calling it junk mail and spam is just being abusively hurtful.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Read the patent. It's not about shipping unordered items to the customer. It's about shipping items, packed for delivery to an undesignated customer, to a shipping hub near the customer. If the customer orders it as predicted, a box gets a full delivery address on the label and goes on the truck; if not, it's held, sent back, or sold to someone else.
Amazon can sometimes avoid air shipment, yet still provide fast delivery, by doing this. The patent is about analyzing those tradeoffs in real-time and optimizing. This takes careful management, or the final shipping hubs will choke with boxed unsold inventory. The final hubs aren't full scale fulfuilment centers with big inventory, order picking, and packing; they're just box handling operations. If the system detects a partial truckload going somewhere and empty space at a destination hub, that's a good time to preposition some items likely to get ordered soon.
The level of coordination this implies is impressive.
That would explain why I got a dildo, two pounds of Kona coffee, a Mickey Mouse Ears hat and the third season of My Little Pony in the mail last week...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My wife has about 30 items on her baby registry at Target.com. Target doesn't know which of her friends will buy each item, but they can be pretty sure that most of them will be purchased. It would make sense for Target to go ahead and ship these items to the local store or distribution center and have them sitting by the loading dock.
In a small french town (I don't remember which one, the story appeared in the newspaper about forty years ago) a bookstore owner had the habit of sending by mail books to people living close to his store. The book was accompanied by a note saying: "For evaluation. If not interested please return".
A contractor was very annoyed by this, so one night he poured a ton of gravel in front of the bookstore, and he put a sign on the top of it saying: "For evaluation. If not interested please return.".
Welcome to the year 2014, a wondrous place, where Amazon have been doing that and untold other things like it for around a decade.
If you're going to dismiss an idea then it might reflect better on you if you do even a modicum of research on it before hand.
Yeah doing that kind of thing is called DOING YOUR FRACKING JOB. In fact if you (and your crew) are good enough you can make up for a few bad Misses in the metrics by getting "negative" serve times.
Hot tip for the folks on the other side of the counter if you have a convoy and you are headed to a spot ring them up when you are about 10+(N*5) minutes away and tell whoever picks up the phone "Hi My name is %name% and i have X cars with Y adults and Z children about W minutes away (bonus if you can sort out the group order while on the phone)"
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