A recently granted patent, first spotted by The Wall Street Journal, suggested that e-commerce giant Amazon was planning to start delivering products to your door before you even order them.
Well, sort of. You shouldn't expect all your wish list items to magically appear tomorrow, but Amazon does have an idea that may help it get ahead in the same-day delivery war, using predictive analytics and a transportation model that would see products basically hovering around potential buyers, either in nearby hubs or on trucks.
Amazon's algorithm would calculate the probability of purchases based on data like customers' past buys, searches and, yes, wish list items, in order to be prepared when you (and your neighbors) do finally click to buy. And if an item is "speculatively shipped to a physical address" of someone who doesn't want it, expect the responsibility to be on the merchant, not the customer:
"Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill," the patent said. Which tells you that Amazon is pretty confident in its analytics prowess.
See more about Amazon's "anticipatory shipping," and what it means for the future of retail, in the 100th episode of "The Content Brief" from Freshwire below.
Missed last week's episode? Find out why Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine think Beats Music can take on Spotify and Pandora here.