
Amazon Wants to Ship Your Package Before You Buy It - canistr
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/17/amazon-wants-to-ship-your-package-before-you-buy-it/
======
joezydeco
A friend of mine works for a large battery company. The moment the hurricane
forecast shows one headed for a populated area they start packing and
dispatching semis of AA/C/D/9V batteries to all the Walmarts, Targets, Grocery
Stores, etc in that area. I'm sure the bottled water and plywood manufacturers
do the same. How does this differ?

~~~
larrys
I will go on record as saying that this is similar to Amazon announcing
drones. It's part PR move but true there is an obvious connection to reality.

Hard to believe that Amazon is going to move the needle much with something
like this. Shipping is already fast. Getting it where it needs to be is
obvious. As you have noted there are many examples of manufacturers
anticipating demand and doing something similar. But they don't have or file
for patents. What about a patent for anticipating that your chain restaurant
will need less help on certain days of the year or when it rains? Most
business would not waste time on this thing (patents) although they do these
things if they can. They don't crow about it though (unless they are doing a
dog and pony show).

This is the type of thing that most companies would do in many cases and never
talk about. Because they aren't as obsessed with creating an image of
invincibility which Amazon spends so much time with. [1] It's kind of like the
shock and awe of US Military propaganda (where they show the well oiled
military machine.) People eat this type of thing up. "Oh look how special
Amazon is".

[1] To scare off competition. Look how mighty we are. Look at the barriers to
competing with us!

~~~
netfire
I don't think they are improving shipping speed to compete with online stores,
as much as to compete with stores in your community. I think the goal is to
make ordering from Amazon almost as quick as getting in your car and going to
a local store.

~~~
waterlesscloud
There are any number of things you might buy from Amazon instead of a local
store if you got same day delivery rather than even 2 day Prime.

It's fairly clear Amazon sees that as a key source of future growth.

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frogpelt
Walmart already does this.

They keep everything on shelves at the local fulfillment center. I go there
maybe once every two weeks and pickup my stuff.

It's a pretty neat concept called retail.

~~~
gaadd33
Do Walmart items ship out of your local superstore or do they ship from the
regional hub? Assuming you buy from Walmart.com and don't wander the miles of
aisles in the store.

~~~
dangrossman
Using the stores themselves as shipping hubs is still a limited pilot program
at Wal-Mart.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/business/wal-mart-tests-
sa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/business/wal-mart-tests-same-day-
delivery.html)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-retail-
walmart-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-retail-walmart-
delivery-idUSBRE92R03820130328)

------
wiredfool
This is a patent for turning UPS and Fedex distribution centers into
warehouses. They're preloading the distribution system so that the only
latency is the last tens of miles, rather than hundreds or thousands. It could
be same day assuming you got your order in before 4am or whenever the trucks
roll. Or even later if they have a more courrier oriented partner.

~~~
WestCoastJustin
Dell currently does something very similar. If you have "same day 4-hour
enterprise support", then the replacement part will most likely come from a
distribution center collocated with your local courier company.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
UPS "Sonic Air" IIRC

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mpclark
We could call these local hubs "shops"

~~~
diminoten
Yeah, and perhaps Amazon could let customers browse the available inventory by
visiting this "shop" in person, if no one's made a purchase yet.

~~~
pingswept
Ah, similar to Amazon's "shopping cart," the shop could provide a physical
cart (imagine a cross between a baby stroller and a faraday cage) to help
customers carry inventory to the exit of the store.

~~~
gnu8
And if the customer is too busy to visit the physical store, or just doesn't
feel like it, Amazon could put the pictures of all of the products they have
on a web site, and simply mail the customers their selections.

~~~
pingswept
That's a pretty good idea, but don't you think it would take too long for the
shipments to get there?

They should come up with a way of tracking what pictures people look at and
then shipping the stuff in the pictures to the warehouses near those people. I
bet you could do the picture tracking thing with an ActiveX control. That
wouldn't work in Navigator, of course.

~~~
gnu8
We could get around that issue by having a dedicated program for looking at
the pictures. We will develop a networked software delivery system that people
will use to install this program quickly and easily.

~~~
pingswept
I see where you're going with that, but I don't think delivery of software
over a so-called "network" will ever be feasible. Even with a 1200 baud modem,
transferring a multi-kilobyte .exe would take hours, and that's assuming the
BBS doesn't drop the connection partway through!

It seems more realistic to transmit the pictures using CD-ROM technology: it's
like Netflix, but for CD-ROMs. Amazon would mail you their catalog CD-ROM, and
you look at a slideshow of all the products they sell. Then, when you decide
what you want, simply fax your order to Amazon, and they tell you which "shop"
to drive to in order to pickup your merchandise.

------
stiff
Uhm, operations research is what, at least 75 years old now? And this is
exactly classical operations research stuff, at least the idea is nothing new:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#History)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain_management](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain_management)

I guess they just patented a particular way of doing this.

------
alexeisadeski3
Satire becomes reality.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA_gwzx39LQ)

------
wavefunction
It's almost like Amazon is recreating the local retail experience, except that
all the mom and pops are owned a monolithic entity with no ties to your
community and you can't actually check out the products before you buy.

I'm heavily opposed to winner-take-all and so my boycott of Amazon books must
continue. I don't really buy anything other than physical books off of Amazon,
so it's not a huge sacrifice.

------
jstalin
Kinda cool. I can imagine a day when, due to "pre-shipping," one could look at
their wishlist and see an alert: "Receive this product today!"

~~~
redler
"There's a man outside your building, right now, with this item. Order it
within the next 12 minutes, and have it within two."

~~~
Erwin
What if everything you bought from Amazon was automatically available for
resale used after a certain period of time? You're thinking of buying the $79
textbook, but Bob who lives across the street will sell it to you for just $39
(Amazon gets $10 for facilitating the transaction, but will take the risk) and
Amazon knows he's home right now.

Or you borrow it from him for a week for $19, he'll also lend you his blender
for another $19.

------
basseq
I imagine transportation costs could quickly spiral out of control if you
didn't have the analytics tuned correctly. But one particular use case comes
to mind: you look at a couple items, maybe even add them to you cart, then
walk away. A lot of retailers now will send you an email for "abandoned
carts"—imagine if that email also included a line that said, "Oh, and if you
finish your order, we'll have it on your doorstep tomorrow." Pretty
compelling.

~~~
swalsh
Except as an amazon prime customer. I already know it'll be there on my
doorstep tomorrow, or at most the day after tomorrow.

Of course, this would probably make shipping to me a lot cheaper.

~~~
sliverstorm
_I already know it 'll be there on my doorstep tomorrow_

But what if it was on your doorstep at 5PM when you get home, and it didn't
cost you a dime extra?

It's also pretty clear why Amazon would love this; they could give you Prime
2-day delivery times with Super-Saver 2-week postage rates.

------
tannerc
Patents != products. Just look at the countless patents Apple has filed over
the years. Many never see the light of day.

Though I suspect Amazon isn't filing this patent as a means to control the
concept (isn't it even that revolutionary that it needs protecting?).

------
taybin
They got a patent for this? "People in this city order this book more often
than other cities. Okay, let's make a deal with our shipper there to stock
some onsite."

Totally obvious.

~~~
GrinningFool
I'm not sure if you're being deliberately hyperbolic, but I think your example
is an extreme oversimplification.

More like "Joe Bob in Nowhereville, KY has this item in his wishlist. He
looked at it three times in the past three days, and twice today. The last
time he exhibited this pattern he bought it within two days, as have 78% of
the people in this geographical region who have exhibited similar patterns.
Let's ship to a local transit in prep for his order."

Actually really cool - and at least based on the summary (can't view the
linked doc b/c of missing plugin of some kind) it's a business method patent
as opposed to a software patent.

------
normloman
Amazon Wants to Suck Money Out Of Your Pocket Through a Hose (wsj.com)

------
excellence24
"anticipatory shipping", this is pretty much just saying that local
warehouses/stores should anticipate demand by using as much data as possible.
For Amazon that means wishlists, viewing history, shopping carts, emails etc.
This is good Jeff Bezos, but not good enough. I could do this better.

In order to best anticipate demand, they should be trying to make deals with
manufactures instead. This system would initially work best with subscription
based products. And then we could figure out how to turn everything into a
type of subscription.

Manufactures have a release cycle that is important to them staying
'competitive'. So they have to constantly make new models and 'retire' the old
ones by planned obsolescence forcing us to buy the new slightly improved model
that has a time bomb built in it to go off when the next model comes out.

So basically Amazon needs to place their customers in a 'release preference'
category. With names like, 'bleeding-edge','beta','stable','2 generations
back', or 'annually/biannually'. This could make manufactures more responsible
and get the latest designs out of secret labs and into consumers hands
quicker.

Customers can choose which category they want to be included in for different
product families. So for example, I might choose the 'bleeding-edge' release
cycle for my phone, but prefer a biannual subscription for a refrigerator or
car.

And unless someone has a brand preference, the best products can be
automatically chosen based on reviews from amazon and social networks and
blogs and benchmarks on hardware/battery life/speed/etc

Discounts will be given for recycling your previous models, and as our 3d
printing becomes better and closer to home, eventually we might just get 'ink'
credits to print out phones, computers, cars, furniture, TV's etc.

On a side note, this kind of system would be the system of all systems and it
would be hard for competitors to start (without the data owned by Amazon). So
I don't think 'Amazon' should get to boast and claim this system as their own
and keep the profits. I would like to see this type of system organized at the
national level at first (until we fully embrace globalization) and we could
vote on an open source 'shopping and distribution' system whose profits go
back directly to the people in the countries they operate. Then people could
join and accept a national system to be proud of, one whose contributors,
ideas,transactions,money,etc are all open and viewable by anyone to encourage
accountability.

------
smackfu
Wait, this is just a patent, and Amazon didn't even respond when asked for
comments. This is a junk invented story. Bravo WSJ.

------
r0h1n
>> The patent exemplifies a growing trend among technology and consumer firms
to anticipate consumers’ needs, even before consumers do.

Wrong. The patent exemplifies a growing trend among technology and consumer
firms to think their business processes ought to be protected by patents when
in fact, no such need exists. Certainly there is no wider (public, society,
industry) good from allowing rich companies to patent something many others
may have easily figured out independently.

~~~
javert
But there is absolutely a need for these companies to assemble patent war
chests; otherwise they are vulnerable to other people who have them.

Or even other people who just have 1 single patent for something they want to
do.

So don't blame the companies, they are acting rationally; blame the system.

~~~
r0h1n
Do you have any evidence that Amazon intends to use this patent purely for
defensive reasons only? If not, we're just speculating. Worse, we're giving
them the benefit of doubt.

~~~
javert
Offense is the best defense, so this is a red herring.

The fact is, voters have set up a dog-eat-dog system. Now you complain because
the dogs eat or get eaten.

------
shittyanalogy
Here's the abstract:

 _A method and system for anticipatory package shipping are disclosed.
According to one embodiment, a method may include packaging one or more items
as a package for eventual shipment to a delivery address, selecting a
destination geographical area to which to ship the package, shipping 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._

As long as you consider being at the store "in transit" they've effectively
"invented" physical stores with a digital only interface. The patent even
describes a method of giving customers in the region discounts on products
that don't sell and are sitting in the "store".

There is nothing novel or new about this and the patent system is broken for
more than just software. The entire rest of the patent is a bunch of filler to
make it seem like there's something important going on when there in fact is
not.

------
falsestprophet
Building warehouses closer to customers isn't that far off "anticipatory
shipping." Could "anticipatory shipping" be a clever scheme to reduce shipping
times while also avoiding establishing tax nexuses (and therefore avoiding the
requirement to collect sales taxes) in additional states?

------
Johnie
This is effectively a CDN for real physical products. Push the product to the
edge nodes for shorter delivery time.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Yeah, but that isn't exactly news. Or patentable. (The details of having the
analytics fine-tune how much of what to push to which edge node may be
patentable under current law, though...)

------
thejteam
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought Netflix already did this with their DVDs.
They would see that certain DVDs were near the top of the queue in certain
areas and move the DVDs closer. Works especially well with more rare items.

------
lovemenot
It may pressure consumers to decide to buy now, if they get visibility on a
desirable product approaching closer to them in delivery time. Especially if
they are also aware that the approaching product may be snapped up by a rival
local consumer with similar tastes. Game theory applies. And this will also be
gamed by customers who understand Amazon's cost and incentive economics. Smart
move though, as it can focus customer awareness into their distribution chain
which is locked-in. Attention shifts from logical: ProductX() to instantiated:
new ProductX(Amazon_supply_chain).

------
fnordfnordfnord
This will work great for things that people "subscribe" to like toilet paper
and dog food, which, I kid you not, is cheaper via Amazon than locally, and,
someone else lugs it to my house for me.

------
existentialmutt
"So Amazon says it may box and ship products it expects customers in a
specific area will want – based on previous orders and other factors — but
haven’t yet ordered. According to the patent, the packages could wait at the
shippers’ hubs or on trucks until an order arrives."

Here's an idea. Pre-ship merchandise to local independent retail locations,
waive the shipping fee but let the retailer mark it up a bit, and offer in-
store pickup.

It's a proven business model, since that's how people bought stuff before
catalogs and the internet.

------
alok-g
This is not shipping before you buy. This is online interface for a brick-and-
mortar store (such that many overheads of traditional stores are gone). Call
it a distributed warehouse if you like.

Patents Office got fooled into seeing this as an invention. The violation
could happen only if they could predict what I specifically want to buy and
ship it for me specifically. If all they do is optimise distribution, well
that's happening since the dawn of trade may I guess.

------
kyyd
Why do they need a patent for this?

~~~
izzydata
To make more money? That seems like an obvious answer. They don't need a
patent to start doing it, they are probably already going to do it.

------
narfquat
So does that mean someday I will be able to call in a same-day airdrop of
semi-uncommon product x that has been sitting in my amazon shopping cart or
wishlist?

~~~
bentcorner
An interesting tactic. If you know you're going to want something but don't
want to pay for it just yet, add it to your cart a week or two in advance to
let it "preload". Real-world precaching.

------
mnordhoff
'“It appears Amazon is taking advantage of their copious data,” said Sucharita
Mulpuru, a Forrester Research [FORR -2.03%] analyst. “Based on all the things
they know about their customers they could predict demand based on a variety
of factors.”'

Something about seeing a big red box next to the analyst highlighting their
company's negative stock performance makes me a wee bit less confident in
their analysis.

------
jhwhite
This definitely makes sense for their subscribe and save items. If they're not
doing it already for them. But I don't think they are. I've got quite a few
things on subscribe and save, I get charged the last day of the month and it
still takes about a week to get my items.

------
jiggy2011
This makes sense, especially if combined with a local retail channel. It would
be neat to be able to travel somewhere and get hooked on some obscure local
food/drink and come back home to find that you're local shop now has it in
stock automatically.

------
raverbashing
I could see this working.

For example, the 7th Harry Potter book, especially if you ordered previous
books with Amazon.

Or some videogame series, or something similar. Still, for these there's a
"pre-order" period, so preshiping without a preorder is kind of moot

------
frandroid
So Amazon would basically fill an actual shopping cart with your current order
at a hub close to you, and when you're done paying, would just come out of the
neighbour's driveway and wheel the cart to your door...

------
mhb
Think of the millions who will succumb to akinetic mutism[1]. Oh the humanity.

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7067573)

------
mlashcorp
I actually find this clever and patentable. It's machine learning assisted
caching for physical packages. Now it all comes down to the predictive
performance of their algorithms.

------
Aqueous
So if you ship something you thought I was going to buy but don't, do I still
have to pay for it when it arrives? Because I'm fucking keeping it.

~~~
alistairjcbrown
In the UK at least, no - they would be unsolicited goods and you have no
obligation to send them back or pay for them.

[http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/consumer_e/consumer_co...](http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/consumer_e/consumer_common_problems_with_products_e/consumer_problems_with_delivery_e/consumer_unsolicited_goods_e/youve_received_goods_or_services_you_didnt_ask_for_distance_sales.htm)

Edit: In the US it looks like it's illegal to send you something you didn't
order unless it's a sample or from a charity.

[https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/...](https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/fraudschemes/othertypes/UnsolicitedFraud.aspx)

------
moo
I've never bought the same thing twice from Amazon. I think this is
publicity/advertising like the helicopter drone story.

------
ryanmcbride
If this means that they would start fronting the cost of importing all my
weird Japanese SFC games then I'm all for it.

------
mrbill
Surely I'm not the only one that kept checking to see that the date on this
article wasn't April 1st.

------
sturmeh
Better yet, send packages by drone and return them if the user hasn't
purchased it yet. D:

------
raws
"... in your garden/on your balcony, while you're away at work."

------
Zikes
> Of course, Amazon’s algorithms might sometimes err, prompting costly
> returns.

If I keep getting boxes on my doorstep that I didn't order, I don't think
Amazon should expect me to keep sending them back.

I'm not turning my front porch into an Amazon micro-warehouse.

~~~
TrainedMonkey
I do not see how getting free stuff is ever a problem.

~~~
Zikes
Certainly not, but the "costly returns" implies an expectation that the
customer would ship the product back if it were sent in error.

~~~
SyneRyder
Amazon once sent me the wrong parcel by mistake. I expected a long convoluted
returns process, but instead Amazon just said I could keep all the items and
that anything I didn't want, I should give to friends or a local charity.

It's probably cheaper & more time-efficient for Amazon to write off the cost
of the item than to deal with reshipping & restocking an item that can't be
sold as new anymore.

------
optymizer1
So.. it's like prefetching.

------
Touche
AOT delivery, excellent.

------
coldcode
Kind of like pre-crime.

~~~
AmVess
I'll be worried when Amazon starts hiring precogs. The question then would be,
would I want something before I want it?

