Online retailer Amazon is expected to begin ‘anticipatory shipping’ in the near future, after successfully taking out a patent on the concept in December.
The modelis based on Amazon’s significant customer history data built up over several years, which allows the company to make a more than educated guess on which customers were likely to order, for example, a newly released book or similar item.
The ‘normal’ online retail model requires Amazon to receive an order before labelling packages with addresses at its warehouses and loading them onto trucks, (or, soon, UAV), which eventually take them to customers’ homes.
According to the patent, Amazon may fill out partial street addresses or postcodes to get items closer to where customers need them, and later complete the label in transit. For multi-unit buildings ‘a package without addressee information may be speculatively shipped to a physical address… having a number of tenants’.
Amazon is planning to box and ship products that it expects customers in a specific area will want, based on previous orders and other factors it gleans from its customers’ ordering patterns. Among the factors taken into account are details of previous orders, product searches, wish lists, shopping cart contents, returns and other online shopping practices. According to the patent, the packages could wait at the shippers’ hubs or on trucks until an order arrives.
The predictive shipping method might work particularly well for a popular book or other items that customers want on the day they are released. Amazon might also suggest items already in transit to customers using its website.
To minimise the cost of unwanted returns, Amazon said it might consider giving customers discounts or even make the delivered item a gift. Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill, provided the number of un-ordered items remains at a manageable level. (474)