I came across a Wall Street Journal article recently that caught my eye, an article about Amazon Lockers. The concept is pretty simple. Amazon offers customers in select locations the option of having their package delivered to an Amazon Locker instead of to their street address. When the package arrives they receive an email letting them know where to pick it up along with the code to unlock it, and because most of the lockers are being placed in locations like convenience stores, often the customer can pick up their package 24 hours a day.
This is a great potential innovation for the segment of their customer base that has trouble receiving their packages – either because they live in an apartment or condo that is difficult to deliver to, aren’t home to sign, or because they are worried that their package might be stolen.
But the motive for the experiment is not purely an altruistic customer service one, companies like Amazon pay up to 20% more to have packages delivered to a residence. So, delivering a package to a locker helps Amazon save money too – helping to offset the costs of installing and maintaining the lockers. And as a bonus they serve as OOH (Out Of Home) advertisements in a context where people’s minds are already open to buying things.
So, what did the Wall Street Journal miss?
[Excerpt, click on the link to read the rest of this post, and to see the video clip there.]
From: BradenKelley.com — The Innovation Locker
By Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is one of the contributing authors to the Amazon best-selling business book, A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing: Advice from Leading Experts, editedby Paul Sloane, with a foreword by Henry Chesbrough (Kogan Page, 2011). Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, is also one of the contributing authors. You can order it here: http://amzn.to/OI_CS
Cathryn Hrudicka co-wrote the chapter, “Building the Culture for Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing,” with Gwen Ishmael and Boris Pluskowski — more information about all of the co-authors and the contents of this book is available at: http://bit.ly/OI_CS_Google
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