Neither Rain, Nor Sleet... Nor Hesitation

I came across an interesting story on Monday and it just struck me as a little odd. It just made me wonder how far we will allow technology to go before we decide its influence on our lives is too much.

This is the story I saw. To summarize, Amazon filed a patent for shipping products to locations before anyone has actually purchased the item, what they call "Anticipatory Shipping". I didn’t know you could patent that, although I imagine the story meant that the patent was on the algorithm, not the idea.

The idea is that in an attempt to limit the time between when you order something and when it gets to you, Amazon will use a number of methods to determine what items areas of the country, and individuals themselves, want to buy. They will then ship the items to that location in anticipation of a purchase, or alternatively to your very doorstep, perhaps before you even decide to make the purchase. So, you have that DVD collection sitting in your cart too long, don’t be surprised if you suddenly see it on your doorstep… along with a bill for the thing you just got but didn’t actually buy.

There are number of potential issues Amazon would have to work out. For one, the algorithm has to be fairly specific and powerful if they intend to send items to people’s doors. Many retailers already use the first half of the idea – that is, they study and map consumer trends to preposition items in warehouses to cut down delivery times for given items. There would need to be more specificity and relative certainty that the recipient will be willing to pay for the item. Even if there is a means of returning the item if the person doesn’t want it, if that happens too often then the company ends up spending more money than it could potentially make. That is why the story mentions Amazon including wish lists (and likely carts) as a component of the algorithm, even how long your mouse hovers over the link to an item’s page.

But I think the main question is the one I led off with; when do we decide that the technology used by these companies is too much? It can be a nuisance waiting through a lengthy shipping process. Waiting days for an item can be a turn off. However, how desperate are we as a society for instant material gratification that we would submit to allowing a corporation’s computer to decide that an item we were merely thinking about was suddenly one that we had to absolutely get. How many people will end up purchasing an item that shows up at their door simply because it showed up?

It is likely that if ever enacted, a strategy like this one would start with only frequent shoppers and/or Amazon Prime users. Amazon Prime already gives members two-day shipping on items so long as they retain membership. The fact they are Prime Members suggests they are already predisposed to buying more from Amazon than anyone else. Getting items to Prime members next day, or even before they decide they’ll commit to the purchase, is most likely to reap actual full purchases instead of a bunch of returns. The idea that those in a specific area may also be given special deals because of items sitting there waiting to be purchased has the likely added benefit of drawing more people into Amazon Prime.

Alternatively, one can imagine there would be a call for a sort of “Do Not Track” option so those occasional visitors to the site who may have only purchased something a few times aren’t suddenly seeing a bunch of stuff showing up at their homes. Or maybe if one does regularly shop Amazon but just don’t want Amazon deciding what to send them and when. One of the most notorious nuisances is return shipping.

No doubt the use of this type of program will count in part on the fact that most people will either forget or procrastinate past the point of no return (pun intended) when it comes to shipping back anything they might not want. Suddenly a person could find themselves with something they don’t want/don’t need, and now be forced to pay for it. One must also imagine there would be restrictions on size and/or price of items so someone doesn’t end up with a thousand dollar TV or whatever else, and be stuck having to pay for it or find time to ship it back to wherever within the assigned return window.

This isn’t unique to Amazon either. Google, somewhat infamously, has used its ability to mine information about people browsing the web under their banner (either using Google search, using the Chrome browser, or using G-mail) to target ads. One could possibly conceive the joint use of the companies’ resources to do something like the Amazon shipping plan with some modicum of success. And, as I said, most national retailers use some measure of this type of customer mapping to determine what products are kept in what parts of the country, and what warehouses and distribution centers, and in what quantity.

But again, I ask if that is the future we will accept. Given some of Amazon’s revelations in the past few months, it would seem the future would be Amazon filling the skies with drones dropping off packages at the doors of unsuspecting citizens who will arrive home in the afternoon or evening to find that they have that one thing they were looking at the other day but didn’t know if they really wanted, along with a bill placing them in debt for the cost of that unsolicited item. I wonder if the draw of convenience will override what was once a prudent and warranted hesitance in allowing corporations or technology to wield so much power over our personal lives.

In the end, Amazon has apparently not decided yet if they will go forward with the ideas of the patent, so getting too uppity right now is premature. Nevertheless I would imagine that for the vast majority of people it’s cheaper and saves a lot of frustration to just pay for what you actually can afford and want to buy, not let Amazon send you stuff and figure it out later. But that’s just me.