According to a USAToday story today, Online retail giant Amazon says it knows its customers so well it can start shipping even before orders are placed.
Amazon filed for the patent last month, and it seems to be another piece to their game of cutting shipping times down.
I don’t know how this will translate into actual practice, but it seems that Amazon has enough data about your purchase behavior to predict when you will buy a certain item, and can have it packed and ready to ship, and even shipping before you place the order.
On top of shopping patterns, Amazon can also look at data like previous orders, product searches, wish lists, shopping cart contents, returns and other online shopping practices. The amount of data that is available both directly within Amazon’s systems and the third party data they definitely have access to in their DMP, should give them enough insight to ship items to you before you even order them.
In order to minimize returns, Amazon will likely offer discount to you if you keep the item they shipped.
I don’t know how this will play out, but It is definitely interesting to see how Amazon is thinking about the future.
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