The best delivery experience is the worst retailer ever
I will be honest: I have been subscribing to Amazon Prime since 5 years now and used it quite a lot. And I have to admit I have been intoxicated by the ability to buy anything out of all the products in the world, at the click of a button and being delivered immediately.
And the best description of Amazon experience is also best describing why you should stop using it.
Buy anything…
We all read that Amazon Prime customers average consumption is ~7 times higher than non subscribers. It uses the classic “loyalty card effect” very effectively. Once you pay for a service, your subconcious wants a pay back.
Checking on Amazon if a product is available soon becomes a reflex. and very rapidly, you just don’t look any other supplier and might miss the discovery of other experiences and products… starting from local retailers that suffer directly from this competition and reduce their work force.
Then the temptation to add another small thing is very easy. But do you really need this new bluetooth gadget?
… out of all the products in the world …
Amazon key evolution has been the opening of its stores to 3rd party vendors, with the creation of a market place. Businesswise, it is very clever as it allows to
- Extend the product offering without taking the risk on the inventory,
- Monetize Amazon audience to other vendors (with a cut on sales),
- Accelerate the scaling of the logistic platform (a large share of 3rd party vendors still use the Amazon logistic to serve the client. they pay for the inventory, lease the sqf in the Amazon Wharehouses, pay for the delivery and leave a cut to Amazon on the sales),
- Identify what products are selling very well to be then cloned and included into the Amazon A-Brand product range.
And this is killing competition and creating a monopoly.
Furthermore, by doing this, Amazon has completly abandonned its Retailer mission which should be to create a consistent product range offering that helps the user to do its shopping.
The result is a clumpsy experience where you are proposed 100s of equivalent products with disparate product description, and hidden specs.
“is this version embedding 8GB of 16 GB, I can’t understand Chinglish”?
And you need to be good at math because finding the best deal will require you to calculate for each one the product price plus the shipping cost.
Retail is not limited to purchasing center negociating prices. Retail is the ability to serve end user needs simply. This later mission has been delegated to the customer that find themselves the best deal, test the product and report a grade, and do the customer support by answering other client questions.
“why oh why does Amazon askes me to answer this end-user question? I sent back this product immediately, so I don’t know how it works”
In exchange, Amazon provides a recommendation engine that urban legends quote as one of the best in the industry… but that reminds me that Amazon started its business in the books. And an algorithm that works (somehow) to recommend books — that I would call “more of the same” — could work for grocery but does not work at all for furniture.
“Please stop recommending me a Satellite TV dish. I just ordered one 1 week ago through your service and I won’t change it for at least 10 years”
In the end, too much choice is not helping in chosing rapidly a descent product.
… at the click of a button …
That is the dirtiest logic of Amazon. It made the purchasing act disappear to push you to compulsive purchasing:
Not feeling good, go to Amazon and get something fun.
Employments are destroyed, trees are smashed to produce lots of corrugated cardboard, trucks are shipping in & out products, and when returned, they are ditched because it is cheaper to refurbish, your money is captured by a bemoth that escape taxation on evey country to pay space trips to his boss….
but you feel good with a new goody.
… delivered immediately
Amazon success is built on the successful delivery experience. It is truely amazing how the have been good since the begining on this, and it clearly participated to the take-off of the service, giving amazon a huge credibility and a final touch on user experience.
but the sofistication of delivery makes it unbearable. as long as you are a Prime subscriber, Amazon offers you the delivery in less than 24h.
But Amazon Prime service has scales so much that it steps into the regular day rythm and bypassed the postal services that knew how to interact with your life:
- It’s saturday night? no worries, someone will ring at your door at 10pm on sunday.
- It is time for your building janitor to take her afternoon break? The delivery guy will call you on your mobile phone while you are in a meeting to ask you where to drop the parcel.
Amazon service is now completely intrusive. Yes, from time to time, it is quite confortable to be delivered so quick in case of emergency. But does the delivery of the bluetooth gadget (that you ordered at the begining of this article) is a good reason to interupt the meeting with your boss or the reading of a story to your kids ?
Even worse, if you are not at home, Amazon offers you to install a digital lock that your Amazon delivery guy can open (under the scrutiny of a webcam of course) !!! why would you open your door to an unknown person while you’re not at home ?
During the 19th century people were dreaming of progress. Nowdays, our society offers innovation. But the 2 words are not always equal.
Don’t get me wrong. I might order from time to time one product in case of emergency or if I miss a very specific reference. but now I prefer to diversify my suppliers.
PS. What about the streaming service?
Let’s be clear Amazon is not running a streaming service for the sake of entertaining you. Amazon has stepped into the TV show industry to push you to subscribe to Amazon Prime and multiply your monthly retail spent with them.
So the same comments apply to the Streaming service:
- Loads of content thrown to you w/o any logic and consistency (if you try the service from a non English country, you will be surprised to ready a large share of the synopsis have not even been translated)
- A mixture of Free access and paid programs,
- An algorithm based recommendation that serves you more of the same.
- …
