Like almost half of all U.S. households, I’m a member of Amazon Prime. For me, having nearly anything I want conveniently delivered anywhere I want in two days is fantastic. However, the second time I bought from them, I was given a choice: Free 2 Day Shipping, as I had signed up for, or Free No Rush (5–7 day) Shipping with a $1 credit to their Amazon MP3 Music Store (with most songs priced $1 or less).
Now the offer isn’t a huge incentive, but you have to appreciate the strategy behind it: Many times customers just don’t need things as fast as we’re able to deliver them. By effectively “polling” my needs, Amazon just created an amazingly flexible logistics model. Can you imagine having a pool of pending deliveries that you can pick and choose when to fill and when to ship based upon your labor and transportation capacities? That’s what Amazon has accomplished.
The strategy is absolutely brilliant:
- They’ve got customers to pay a premium for shipping (most orders over $25 ship free 3–5 day anyway).
- They’ve created a membership organization which builds loyalty — if you’re in the Prime program, you’re likely to buy from Amazon or at least check there first.
- They are determining customer’s true time requirements, and thanking them for the flexibility with a token MP3 song — a near universal currency in today’s world.
- By having up to 7 days to select orders based on size, weight, or delivery area, they are able to optimize shipping strategy to lower costs.
Now, based around the requirements of their 2 day must-deliver products, they can fill trucks and planes based on available capacity. They can have geographically revolving flights (Pittsburgh on Mondays, Cleveland on Tuesdays, for example). They can lower inventory based on order time. If their suppliers can supply them with inventory in just a few days, perhaps they don’t carry the inventory at all!
If your business delivers products, think about how you might apply this to your business: A brand loyalty program, rush delivery when your customers need it, flexibility when they don’t, a small reward to thank them for both the information and permission to be flexible.
It happened that, as I was placing my order I was about to leave town for a week so certainly didn’t need it in a rush. I took the credit. A handful of times since then, I was in less of a hurry so received more credits. Less = More. I recently used $6 in credits to buy a $5.99 MP3 download of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Thanks Amazon.
