It only seems like last week that I was writing about Amazon in my weekly editor’s column, and here I am doing it again. But before I find myself lost up the Amazon once more, I’d like to tell you about some customer research from Yodel that eDelivery was given an exclusive first look at.
With more than 1.3M reviews, responses and opinions from customers across all ages, the findings make one thing abundantly clear – people want choice, and choice is not a one-size-fits-all affair. From neighbours to collection points, retailers have to give customers choices that fit in with the lives they lead. If you live in London, for example, the very idea of having to communicate with your neighbours in order to retrieve a parcel probably feels quite strange and unnerving.
Speaking of which, without a great deal of fanfare or hoopla, last week Amazon Prime Now came to town. London town, that is. Well, bits of it. But while much of London, and the rest of the UK, will have to wait to experience no longer having to wait, it wouldn’t do to be too dismissive of Prime Now’s current reach.
According to eDelivery reader David Cockrell, who left a comment at the end of our Amazon Prime Now story, just being available in in London’s Zone 1 “(as defined for transport purposes) gives Amazon access to 1,455,020 resident workers aged 16 – 64 according to the 2011 census, so a little out of date, but at least provides a baseline. In terms of postcodes this equates to a potential market covering 25,172 postcodes containing 203,491 delivery points: 162,852 residential and 40,639 non-residential e.g. businesses. This excludes 2,761 PO boxes.”
Not wishing for more than a week to go by without having some sort of big reveal or other, Amazon has this week announced it’s taking the mega-promotion fight straight to Black Friday’s door, with it’s very own Prime Day. Promising “more deals than Black Friday”, Prime Day takes place on 15 July and is a one-day event strictly for Prime members.
Another super-peak..? Will it mean two lots of pain for the delivery industry, or will it help take some of the pressure off the Black Friday / Cyber Monday aftermath by slaking some shoppers’ thirst for bargains? We’ll return to that one before long.
We’re slightly more than half way through 2015 and it’s not shaping up to be what you might call uneventful, is it?
Elsewhere on eDelivery this week, we continue to extend our European coverage by considering what might happen if the 2017 EU referendum sees the British public voting to leave. In the aftermath of the Greek referendum, and the protracted, painful negotiations that followed it, this is a timely look at what EU membership means, and is something we’ll come back to.
We also look at the appetite for social carriers in the Nordics, taking in the opinions of a new market entrant – Trunkbird – and a more familiar and well-established name – DHL. Can they co-exist or will there be too many points of friction?
Or perhaps crowd-shipping’s lasting legacy will be that it forces entrenched carriers to dust themselves off and innovate to survive. Jon Gibson of Crimson & Co thinks that might be one outcome.
Behind the scenes, we are preparing the ground for our first ever eDelivery Conference, which takes place on 13 October, you’ll find details here.
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