Amazon, the incredibly popular e-commerce portal, has taken huge technological strides over the past few months.
The company has just received approval for a patent that was filed in August of 2012 that is named “System for Anticipatory Package Shipping”.
Many competitors raised their heads asking questions to what this is exactly, and the answer is quite impressive.
Amazon will go through your buyer’s history browsing all categories such as clothing, books, electronics, beauty supplies and whatever else you may have purchased. Then based on the type of items you have purchased, in addition to the user’s wish lists and other personal information Amazon will predict which purchase is likely to make next.
When it is determined that there is a clear demand for this product, it is then shipped to the closest available warehouse and is stocked there until the user makes the purchase.
According the patent, a possible scenario for ‘Anticipatory Shipping’ is, “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 the time of shipment, and while the package is in transit, completely specifying the delivery address for the package.”
If, however, you do not do as the software predicted, rumors suggest that you may receive the product free of charge as it would be more costly to ship it back to its original location.
This latest technological advance has caused analysts, competitors and users alike to wait in anticipation for this service to commence.
Shipping Drones
This announcement comes only a few months after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed “Amazon Prime Air” to the public.
This is a program that will use automated drones, dubbed “Octocopters” to deliver purchased merchandise to the user in 30 minutes. This ground-breaking news truly shocked the world as commercial use for drones was previously unheard of.
Bezos said in an interview with ‘60 minutes’, “I know this looks like science fiction, but it’s not. We can do half-hour delivery… and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3kg), which covers 86% of the items that we deliver.”
While the chief executive feels that this plan may come to fruition in the next couple of years, many are skeptic that this is a realistic time frame. As of yet the Federal Aviation Administration has yet to approve of the company’s enthusiastic plans and experts believe that it may be a while before they do so.
However, one thing is certain, Amazon is paving the way with innovative techniques to save time and increase customer satisfaction and many are eager to see what other plans they have for the future.