Jeff Bozos' announcement on "60 Minutes" that Amazon intends to implement 30 minute deliveries in select markets by 2015 created quite the buzz over the Thanksgiving Holiday. The idea of rapid item delivery has tremendous appeal to busy consumers, did you forget to buy a bottle of wine for the party you were invited to, order a rapid drone to bring a bottle of your choice right to your door right on time. The, currently, science fiction sounding concept does have some rational concerns that need to be overcome, the concerns include: what is the additional cost incurred on a delivery that must have such a rapid response time, ensuring accurate item delivery, noise, legal, etc..... (insert more later, sorry a bit brain bonked right now)
In the Amazon video a special orange box is used to contain the item(s) that would be delivered from the distribution center to the consumer. Critics have asked how Amazon will retrieve these special boxes after deliveries. Options might include, having the boxes simply be made of a low cost recyclable material, cardboard for example, and have the price of the delivery box be part of the overall cost of rapid deliveries, another option could include a Netflix style return service, where customers are asked to send the boxes back to Amazon through the US Postal Service, this approach would allow for more sophisticated packaging.
Another concern is the transit distance between Amazon's primary distribution centers and clients. (This part of the concept has varying degrees of roughness) Instead of relying on a single primary distribution hub there is the potential to implement multi-roll distribution nodes. Advanced vending machines might be one potential approach, several classes of vending machine would fill different rolls, the more traditional vending machines would still operate as a normal vending machine, selling snacks, supplies, or drinks, but with the addition of a docking node that would allow for a drone to dock with the vending machine, loading up on whatever item customers have asked for while recharging their batteries. The second class of vending machines would serve as a corner holding center, capable of taking deliveries and holding them until clients either picked up items in person or had them delivered at a later time, via either drone or ground services. The third class of distribution machines would be intended to work with physical retailers, they would serve as mini smart warehouses, providing access to the items in their inventory that could be carried by the robotic delivery services. The physical store system would need to account for the cost concerns of store owners who would want to avoid having the items they sold online having to compete with Amazon's price and in the store sales price suffer as a result, to this end, Amazon could list prices so that customers were first shown the price for the rapid delivery items in their area and then given a chance to order from Amazon's logistic services (this assumes Amazon makes money on the rapid delivery service).
The network of in community delivery services would allow for rapid delivery services to integrate themselves into regional economies to the benefit of the majority of players, so long as the legal framework is there. Ideally the underlying technology for the localized distributions nodes would be open sourced, this would help to minimize the barrier of entry forMom and Pop shops. Additionally this could allow for users to automatically make their wares available for consumption both locally and internationally.
Another concern is the transit distance between Amazon's primary distribution centers and clients. (This part of the concept has varying degrees of roughness) Instead of relying on a single primary distribution hub there is the potential to implement multi-roll distribution nodes. Advanced vending machines might be one potential approach, several classes of vending machine would fill different rolls, the more traditional vending machines would still operate as a normal vending machine, selling snacks, supplies, or drinks, but with the addition of a docking node that would allow for a drone to dock with the vending machine, loading up on whatever item customers have asked for while recharging their batteries. The second class of vending machines would serve as a corner holding center, capable of taking deliveries and holding them until clients either picked up items in person or had them delivered at a later time, via either drone or ground services. The third class of distribution machines would be intended to work with physical retailers, they would serve as mini smart warehouses, providing access to the items in their inventory that could be carried by the robotic delivery services. The physical store system would need to account for the cost concerns of store owners who would want to avoid having the items they sold online having to compete with Amazon's price and in the store sales price suffer as a result, to this end, Amazon could list prices so that customers were first shown the price for the rapid delivery items in their area and then given a chance to order from Amazon's logistic services (this assumes Amazon makes money on the rapid delivery service).
The network of in community delivery services would allow for rapid delivery services to integrate themselves into regional economies to the benefit of the majority of players, so long as the legal framework is there. Ideally the underlying technology for the localized distributions nodes would be open sourced, this would help to minimize the barrier of entry forMom and Pop shops. Additionally this could allow for users to automatically make their wares available for consumption both locally and internationally.
