In December, Amazon announced plans to ship your bought items via drone.
Related: Amazon Testing Drones Because Otherwise Drones Could Kill Amazon (Delivery)
But, by the looks of a new patent, that plan fast might not be fast enough for the world’s largest online retailer. Now, they are planning to ship your items before you have even bought them.
Related: Forget Black Friday, Take a Look at Predictive Shipping (and Amazon’s Yesterday Shipping!)
In a nutshell, Amazon is counting on its shoppers being predictable (Predictive Shipping).
The company filed a U.S. patent for their “anticipatory package shipping” method and system in December. According to their patent, Amazon plans to “(ship) the package to the destination geographical area without completely specifying the delivery address at time of shipment, and while the package is in transit, completely specifying the delivery address for the package.” Meaning, Amazon believes it has developed an algorithm that tells them what you will buy before you even decide yourself.
Amazon will use customers’ search history, their wish lists, even how long a cursor hovers over an item to preemptively deliver packages.
And if their algorithm slips up and the company sends a package that a customer didn’t buy? Well, the patent reads that delivering “the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill.”
Source: PBS NewsHour
Amazon Plans to Ship Your Packages before You Even Buy Them
Drawing on its massive store of customer data, Amazon plans on shipping you items it thinks you’ll like before you click the purchase button. The company gained a new patent for “anticipatory shipping,” a system that allows Amazon to send items to shipping hubs in areas where it believes said item will sell well. This new scheme will potentially cut delivery times down, and put the online vendor ahead of its real-world counterparts.
Amazon plans to box and ship products it expects customers to buy preemptively, based on previous searches and purchases, wish lists, and how long the user’s cursor hovers over an item online. The company may even go so far as to load products onto trucks and have them “speculatively shipped to a physical address” without having a full addressee.
Such a scenario might lead to unwanted deliveries and even returns, but Amazon seems willing to take the hit, stating in the patent, “Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill.” Interestingly enough, this mode of shipping was predicted in a 2012 BuzzFeed short story — except it didn’t work so well in that particular instance.
It’s unclear when Amazon plans on launching this new initiative, but the patent’s ambition does jibe with its other efforts to cut down delivery time — such as delivering packages on Sunday and even the drone concept it’s currently developing.
Source: The Verge
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