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Amazon looks to expand delivery beyond home, office
An Amazon locker at a 7-Eleven store in Arlington, Virginia.
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Kai Ryssdal: Continuing with the theme of changes digital technology has wrought, there's this. The next time you stop by a 7-Eleven for a Slurpee, you might also be able to pick up that package you ordered from Amazon. Amazon is outfitted 7-Elevens in a couple of test markets with what it's calling "Amazon Lockers." So packages don't have to be sent to your home or office.
Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer explains.
Nancy Marshall-Genzer: Here’s how the Amazon lockers work: When you order, you click on the shipping address of the locker near you. When your package arrives, Amazon sends you an email with a code. You go to your local 7-Eleven. We went to one in Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington. The Amazon Locker was kitty corner from the cat food. It’s about 10 feet long, and as tall as your refrigerator. You punch in your code. And, viola. here’s that shiny new Kindle you ordered.
Sucharita Mulpuru is an online retail analyst at Forrester Research.
Sucharita Mulpuru: I think they’re aiming at late adopters to the Internet or people who, for whatever reason have hesitated purchasing products from Amazon.
Maybe they’re afraid their pricey packages will be stolen from their doorsteps or rained on. Or maybe, says Katherine Hutt of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, it’s none of our business.
Katherine Hutt: People don’t want people they live or work with to see what they’re ordering. I’m not sure.
Larry Weber is head of W2Group, a digital marketing firm. He says Amazon might be thinking way outside the box, imagining a time when we order something in the morning, and pull it out of an Amazon Locker in the afternoon.
Larry Weber: Almost like your salad for lunch.
Weber says Amazon could piggyback on 7-Eleven’s just-in-time delivery system.
Amazon itself is being cagey about its plans. My repeated emails and phone calls to the company were not returned by deadline.
In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace.
Hello nycmr and garydpdx, I can't believe Mulpuru, Hutt, and Weber are baffeled by this move by Amazon. I too live in an urban area and have had numerous packages ripped off my door step. Since most everyone else in the neighborhood is a single working adult, it's a total hassel trying to figure out who will be home to take delivery of my stuff. I stopped buying online a few years ago for this reason. However, I generally prefer to buy online for numerous reasons.
Now USPS should use this new competitions to give out incentives to other on line shopping centers for expanding this kind of services. ebay is huge enough to expand with USPS instead of being narrow inside 7/11. ebay and USPS can even push their own wireless services if they have the Tweeter community voices. In return, Tweeter must help communities implement a platform participating in processing legislatures in Washington and make sure public office representatives are representing their interests as accurately as on Internet time.
I also expect high speed rails are a must for USPS, for Ebay, for Amazon, for 7-11 and even for Tweeter. I want my stuffs come with me or come to me in almost real time if those rails are available and I can go to pick them up with my rented e-cars any time.
I think the reporting on this story fails to consider those like me who live in cities (I am in NYC) are just overworked and do not live in doorman buildings. I would not order from Amazon because I'm simply not home and trying to arrange packages with UPS is a hassle.
I placed my first order on Amazon in probably 2 years just this morning before I heard this news piece. And it was because of the locker that I even thought of them as a possibility. The grocery is open until 1 am, which means whenever I get home from work (sometimes after midnight) I can still get my package. I think it's brilliant!
