Today I came across a Youtube parody video, Amazon Yesterdays Shipping.

While the video is created to be funny it does actually illustrate the key goal behind current Amazon plans that of reducing the delivery time between ordering and receiving goods.

From my experience within e-commerce customers have always been willing to pay for speed, even when a longer time service is free this offers a near ideal business scenario, advertise free delivery, on a slow service then offer a paid upgrade for a next day service.

As well as offering increased profitability as the extra payment tends to represent pure profit, the next day delivery service can also reduce insurance and storage costs and liabilities as well. The limitation to this technique tends to by within the human picking process with warehousing which can be expensive in terms of theft, wages and also inaccurate.

Amazon same delivery service is being enabled by enhancements in the picking service and the requirement for local sales tax collection robbing them of the commercial advantage of distant distribution, in fact I would go as far as saying that this probably marks the beginning of the end of the physical retail experience.

Now I happen to think that the instant delivery service is possible but that’s an idea for a startup and not for here.