{"id":1604120,"date":"2014-01-21T06:50:32","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T14:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/21\/preemptive-shipping-amazon-takes-retail-business-intelligence-to-the-next-level\/"},"modified":"2014-02-06T19:47:16","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T03:47:16","slug":"preemptive-shipping-amazon-takes-retail-business-intelligence-to-the-next-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/21\/preemptive-shipping-amazon-takes-retail-business-intelligence-to-the-next-level\/","title":{"rendered":"Preemptive shipping? Amazon takes retail business intelligence to the next level"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In late December, Amazon <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/digits\/2014\/01\/17\/amazon-wants-to-ship-your-package-before-you-buy-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">patented a process for shipping products<\/a>&nbsp;before shoppers buy them. The process, which the company calls &quot;anticipatory package shipping,&quot; uses <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">retail customer intelligence<\/a> to streamline and expedite delivery services.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Wall Street Journal blog reported that by analyzing data about consumers&#039; previous purchases, search history, wish lists, shopping carts, returns and cursor hover trends, Amazon believes it can discern customers&#039; needs before they make a final decision. By adding this technology to its shipping drones and delivery lockers, Amazon makes one thing clear: To stay competitive, retailers need to find creative ways to take advantage of new technology, like Big Data analytics.<\/p>\n<p>Although Amazon&#039;s idea is both patented and dependent on a large-scale operation, companies across&nbsp;all industries can use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/Solutions\" target=\"_self\" class=\"dnautolink\">retail business intelligence<\/a> to streamline their processes. For example, shoppers&#039; online activity or in-store inquiries can be used to launch personalized marketing campaigns, and stores can identify items that consumers generally purchase together to organize their displays more effectively.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Amazon&#039;s efforts to get goods into consumers&#039; hands faster could <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.gartner.com\/robert-hetu\/as-amazon-patents-anticipatory-shipping-what-is-the-impact-on-multichannel-retailing\/\" target=\"_blank\">indicate the strength of omnichannel marketing<\/a>, suggested Bob Hetu, research director at Gartner. Omnichannel&nbsp;stores have a home-field advantage when customers want instant gratification, he noted, and Amazon might feel pressured to compete with their combination of online and on-hand resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late December, Amazon patented a process for shipping products before shoppers buy them. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/21\/preemptive-shipping-amazon-takes-retail-business-intelligence-to-the-next-level\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1604121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1604120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retail-customer-business-intelligence"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1604121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.retailpro.com\/News\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}