Yesterday, 60 Minutes did a story on Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s growing ventures. (You can see the video here.) The company’s approach is all about the customers. For example, Amazon sells its Ereader, the Kindle, at the same price it costs to make it. Although it is constantly encouraged to raise its prices, Bezos says that would result in a lack of trust between the company and its consumers.
I think this is a brilliant marketing strategy – companies want to make money and many are obsessed with doing just that. But taking that obsession away and truly putting the customer first and giving them what they want is rare. Because Bezos isn’t so concerned with making as much as he possibly can, Amazon wins and so do consumers. This mindset is genius, and the buyers appreciate that they aren’t being taken advantage of.
The newest innovation Amazon has up its sleeve is its future plans for delivering packages – drones. Although Bezos says its a few years away from operation, he says it will work. Electronic drones will carry packages up to five pounds to areas within a 10 mile radius (which will take up to 30 minutes). Talk about instant delivery.
This would revolutionize online shopping and the Internet. Consumers like instant gratification, and this would certainly provide that. Last minute shopping, especially around the holidays, is a common occurrence, and in most situations the drones would be a quicker experience than going out to a real store and buying the product. If this caught on, I bet there would be a noticeable decrease in the amount of spending done in stores. I can just see the world 20 years from now – no stores, only online companies and anti-social humans sitting behind computer screens interacting with technology more than real people.
JRN 301 