Is Amazon messing with its Prime program?

I was an early adopter of Amazon Prime, the membership program where you get unlimited 2-day shipping at no extra charge for an annual fee of $79. The program has over the years been enhanced with a limited selection of free instant videos and free Kindle books, but the shipping is what I really like. It’s a great feeling to be able to see something, want it, and know I’ll have it in 48 hours without paying express shipping. It’s definitely led to some impulse buys which were probably better for Amazon than for me. And it’s conditioned my family (immediate family members also get the free shipping, though not the other features) to look at Amazon as their primary shopping modality.

So with all those mutual benefits, I haven’t felt more than a tinge of guilt about buying the occasional five dollar item knowing Amazon is probably paying more to ship it than I’m paying for it. But now that seems to be changing. Some low priced items (I’ve noticed this in their grocery and baby departments) are now “add on” items where you get free shipping only if you combine them with another purchase. And others have been raised to outrageous price points: a box of kosher salt, which costs $3.29 at the supermarket, is now $10 at Amazon. I’m not sure who would buy it at this price so wonder what purpose it serves to even offer it.

The net result is that I’m now questioning my relationship with Prime. I don’t have an alternative in mind… nobody else offers such a loyalty program combined with a huge selection to make it meaningful… but that means my roving eye should be all the more troubling for Jeff Bezos and crew. It’s hard to break such an ingrained shopping habit, but I’m thinking it may be worth the trouble. And I’ve definitely got my eyes open for a price increase or other future limitations, so I won’t be automatically renewing as I have in the past.

If a lot of other Prime customers feel as I do, Amazon may want to do some rethinking.

Fulfillment lessons from the Container Store

Container Store fulfillment materials
Packing tape and portfolio from my Container Store shipment

My wife loves the Container Store. She has a closet full of Elfa components and various other elements that roll around or sit under shelves. Recently she bought four big stacking wire baskets to hold mittens, hats and other snow gear, one for each family member. The box arrived (several days before the promised date, by the way) and it was as big as a steamer trunk. I’d assumed that shipping, an unhappy necessity for those who don’t live near a store, was similar to what they charge at Ikea—an arm and a leg. Not so; this was shipped at a flat rate of $19.95.

Before I knew this I had opened the package and became somewhat intrigued by a couple of its features. First, there was a special heavy-duty fiber tape used to seal the box which had CS’s “7 Foundation Principles” printed on it in an endless loop. These can be found on the website along with lots of comments and inspiring videos. CS is consistently voted one of the best places to work in America and its employees are fervent in their mission. To me the dialog seems a bit cultish but that’s just my perspective and I do not begrudge the employees or their customers their enthusiasm.

Second, the bill of lading was packaged in a little blue portfolio including a thank you from the President. It was at this point I decided shipping must be REALLY expensive so I peeked inside and there were no prices on the receipt. Then I went online and discovered how reasonable their shipping actually is.

Bottom line, this is a great fulfillment effort that extends the Container Store brand right into the home as the package arrives. The cost of the special tape and the card-stock portfolio are not insignificant but my guess is they haven’t been tested against a generic approach. Container Store felt this is the way to communicate with their customers, and that’s the end of it.

The whole experience puts to shame mass produced efforts like Lands End, from whence your coveted fashions arrive in a plastic sack and a return label is printed on your shipping document as if they assume you’re already having second thoughts. Amazon with its non-recyclable receipts, in which the UPC code for the package is printed on peel-off paper and then switched to the outside of the package leaving a blank spot on the receipt, isn’t much better. Not as bad as Applebee’s decision to just throw it in a box, but not great.

Fulfillment is the last mile in your relationship with your customer. There may be sound economic reasons that you can’t be as effusive as the Container Store. But consider their example, and learn from it.

What we can learn from voters’ expectations versus their intentions

Ask me who I’m going to vote for in the Presidential election and you’ll get one data point, which might be a lie. Ask me who I think is going to win and you’ll get a far more reliable predictor. First, because I’m no longer on the spot for answering about my own vote. Second, because my answer will encompass my conversation with friends about how they’re voting, plus what I’ve heard and read and seen in the media and on people’s bumpers and in their yards. In essence, I’m speaking as a social network of one.

The above isn’t a hypothesis. The New York Times cites an academic paper by David Rothschild and Justin Wolfers that compares the predictive power of voters’ intentions (how they will vote) and their expectations (who they think will win). In the majority of presidential elections since 1952, expectations were the winner. According to Wolfers, a professor of economics at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, that’s because the expectations question taps into additional knowledge beyond the personal voting question, and of course “more information produces better results.”

In fact, the authors estimate that each expectation answer is equivalent to ten “how will you vote” answers, thus solving a problem that I didn’t realize existed: people today are much less responsive to polls. A few years ago, 40% of people polled would respond. Today it’s down to 10%, according to Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center. Think about the number of polling calls you’ve likely received during this election and you can guess why that is. We’re oversaturated with polls.

As a marketer, I’ve often used polls as an involvement device. You can gather valuable useful audience information and then offer the finished poll to participants as an incentive to answer. As copywriters, we would never ask personal questions that make readers uncomfortable; rather we’ll be looking for ways to make them interested and eager to respond. We’ll automatically go for the “expectation” vs “intention” question, in other words.

You can also use polls to get people thinking about the benefits of your product by asking questions that show it in the best possible light. For example, one of my favorite controls is a package I wrote for Intuit for a new tax preparation product that wasn’t quite ready for prime time. I asked people what they’d like to see in a tax prep product, with multiple-choice answers that touched on existing and planned product features. The involvement made them invested in the product’s development and they were more likely to buy it as a result; this package remained the control during the entire lifecycle of the product.

But back to presidential polling, you’re probably wondering who is picked to win next Tuesday according to the “expectation” method. Read the Times article for that answer. Then come back at midnight on November 6 to see if they were right.

UPDATE: They were right.