Let me set the scene. You’ve been eyeing up a Nixon D32000 Digital SLR Camera since before Christmas. Santa unfortunately didn’t receive your wish list and now come February you are still contemplating purchasing the nifty piece of equipment, your mouse hovering over the ‘Buy it now’ button at least once a day. At last you decide to take the plunge and go for it, selecting standard shipping, looking forward to receiving your item in 3-5 business days. Your doorbell goes and you reluctantly pull yourself away from the TV to open it. It’s a delivery man with an Amazon package, your brand new camera- 2 hours since you hit confirm order! Surely not?

This will soon be a reality for Amazon customers around the world when they launch their recently patented ‘anticipatory package shipping”.  Created to improve delivery time, this pioneering concept will sound slightly futuristic, even to our 21^st century brains.  To Jeff Bezos and his men, this is just the next natural progression in how they use the endless amounts of customer data they have in order to improve their service and keep their pole position in the retail world.

Data is at the heart of everything Amazon does and the question always asked is “how can we turn data into action?” They know what you last purchased, how often you purchase, what you really want to purchase (wish lists), they even know how long you hovered over a certain product with your mouse! It would seem one day; Amazon will know you better than anyone. A scary thought? I should say.

By using their data, they are confident they’ll be able to establish which geographical areas have multiple addresses which are likely to order a particular product.  They will start the shipping process for these products and when a customer actually does make an order for say a Nixon D32000 Digital SLR Camera, the order will then be re-directed to their address and delivered.

I can hear the scepticism already.  Is this actually going to work? Unlike their ‘Octocopters’ idea, this may actually come to fruition.  Optimising the supply chain from the signals you get from customers is a very clever idea. It allows you to have your stock in the most intelligent place at the most intelligent time.  The more data you have (Amazon has a LOT of data), the more you can hone your algorithms to be as reliable and accurate as possible.

I’m sure there will be a few hiccups along the way however. There is the possibility some customers will receive products before they have even hit buy- but Amazon have a solution for that- give the customer the product for free, or at least at a discounted price. How nice of them! This offer in itself may cause issues though. You may get the savvier online shopper going out of their way to predict which signals prompt ‘unwanted’ deliveries in order to receive a free product or discount, having major effects on profit.

There is also the question of whether fulfilling a customer’s order in 2 hours is actually a good idea? What happens the next time this customer makes a standard delivery order, only to find their item is delivered on time?  Amazon could end up actually disappointing their customers.

It also begs the question whether or not retailers and brands should be following in Amazon’s footsteps? The answer to this question is simple. Anticipatory shipping is the icing on the cake that many retailers do not yet have the ingredients for.  Retailers need to get the very basics of retail right first before they embark on a journey to challenge the behemoth of the retail industry.