Industry

Amazon Changing Shopping Expectations – What Does It Mean For Your Business?

Posted by Pixafy Team

The ecommerce sector is constantly evolving, but every once in a while a major player comes in and completely disrupts longstanding models. Amazon spent December launching new programs that are emblematic of how one leader can change expectations, and these early pilots show signs that businesses must be ready for significant disruption moving ahead.

Amazon Go shows growing blend between physical, digital worlds

What does it mean to shop online? If you think of ecommerce primarily as customers using your website, you may be missing out on what mobile device users are doing. You may also fall behind on social commerce. These cross-channel experiences are becoming increasingly important in the modern ecommerce landscape, but a true omnichannel experience must incorporate not only digital shopping methods, but also the physical world. Amazon Go puts this need under a microscope.

“Digital and physical shopping experiences are blending into a common channel.”

Amazon Go is a new pilot program from the online retail giant that allows consumers to walk into a physical store, grab a product and walk out. They login to a mobile app when they enter and cameras pick up their movement. From there, a variety of cameras and sensors identify the products a customer takes throughout the store and charges users for the goods they take with them when they leave. This entire process is automated in a mobile app and works across an individual’s Amazon account.

The Amazon Go project is currently in an extremely early stage, but it highlights how digital and physical shopping experiences are blending into a common channel. In some ways, what is often discussed as being available across all channels may actually be better thought of as seeing disparate shopping methods as one big channel that organizations must create a common experience in. Web, mobile, social and physical storefronts are merging, and Amazon Go isn’t the only place where the ecommerce giant is changing expectations.

Amazon Prime Air hopes to accelerate shipping times

Drone delivery has long been an idea in the public consciousness, but Amazon is working to bring this idea into action through a pilot program in which autonomous drones deliver goods to consumers. In practice, a user will order a product online. If that product is in stock in a local fulfillment center, and the user is part of the Amazon Prime Air pilot, the user will be able to select that option and have the package almost immediately boxed and prepared for shipping. From there, a drone picks up the package and delivers it autonomously to a landing pad on the users’ lawn.

Amazon isn’t even the first company to try this kind of program. A Recode report explained that 7-Eleven actually beat Amazon to get its pilot program launched and in action. The common denominator, however, is automated delivery processes and robust integration between websites and inventory modules to allow for extremely fast shipping times. What’s more, Amazon isn’t resting on its laurels. Instead, a recent Fortune article pointed out that Amazon was recently awarded a patent that takes rapid delivery to another level.

According to Fortune, Amazon has received a patent for an airborne fulfillment center, an airship that functions as a warehouse and can serve as a carrier for drones. The goal here is to eliminate the need to build warehouses in specific regions in order to support drone delivery. Instead, the flying warehouse would make it easier for Amazon to expand across a variety of regions and allow drones to make shorter trips. The goal would be to have the airships hover at approximately 45,000 feet. Rather than taking off from ground, drones would launch directly from the airships, drop off a product, then return to a ground-based facility, which will serve as a hub to shuttle drones back up to the airborne warehouses.

Drone delivery may not be too far away.

What do Amazon’s advances mean for you?

Your business may not be able to keep up with robust drone deliveries or retail stores with hundreds of cameras to track user activity, but you can offer integrated shopping experiences that provide smooth customer experiences across all channels. Modern app platforms can interconnect data between web, social and mobile users across both the ecommerce platform and a business’ enterprise resource planning system. When combined, these solutions enable organizations to coordinate operations across all phases of the business. Furthermore, user activities are tracked regardless of how customers interact with you, making it much easier to establish cohesive customer experiences.

What Amazon is doing may push the envelope beyond what you can handle right now, but it also shows that the need to improve operations around shifting consumer expectations is acute. New technologies are changing how consumers and businesses interact, and organizations that effectively respond with innovation of their own can keep customers engaged and loyal to the brand.

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