Mark Kolier’s Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Amazon.com’

Stuart Elliot of The New York Times writes the advertising column and periodically has 20 questions about advertising. I decided to come up with a few of my own.

1) Why are there ads in the subway with QR codes displayed when there is no internet service on the subway itself?

2) Would you turn your house into a billboard? http://www.aol.it/rpy8Na

3) How long will it be before urinals in public restrooms carry advertising?

4) Do you watch the screen when riding in the back of taxi?

5) Would you be willing to receive a steady stream of ads on your smart phone if the monthly fees were paid for by the carrier?

6) Which company do you think will last longer – Groupon or Foursquare?

7) If you’ve used a Groupon or Living Social coupon to dine in a restaurant you’ve never before visited – have you ever gone back a second time?

I don’t watch ads when I DVR a television program preferring to fast forward through them as I believe is the case with most people. What percentage of DVR watchers do you think should be counted as having actually watched an ad during the program?

9) Will people continue to patronize online companies that don’t offer a free shipping option?

10) In 2012 will you use Ebay’s Redlaser.com bar scanner or Amazon.com’s bar code scanner to check pricing on in-store items?

I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah and Joyous Kwanzaa. Oh and a healthy and Happy 2012 too!

Since I am a busy person and am not much of a shopper (more the type of buyer that walks into a store to buy what he came for and then walks out), shopping on the web is a great option for me. During the holidays I, like so many people, relish every opportunity to not have to fight the store crowd to purchase gifts.

My estimation is that more than 75% of the time I shop online. I have fairly high confidence that my credit card info will not be stolen (it used to be higher), and that the right goods will be shipped to me in a reasonable amount of time if I’ve not specified a special delivery.

So when I noticed that I was running low on after shave/cologne and realized that I had no time to go to the store I decided to try shopping for it online. It seems to me that very few men would go out of their way go to the store specifically to buy men’s cologne as it is the kind of thing you pick up when you are at the mall or department store shopping for other things and you remember to buy some so you won’t have to make a special trip.

Since I am an Amazon Prime member I checked it out there first. The annual membership to Amazon Prime offers ‘free shipping’ which is actually not free since you pay $79 a year for the membership. I checked out the offerings for men’s cologne on Amazon and they had a fair amount but it was not all that well organized and a bit clunky.

I then decided to try Perfumania.com (Sephora.com was next on my list). The Perfumania.com site was well organized and easy to navigate. They were having a June special which was clearly marked on the home page. Sephora.com also looked intuitive and easy to use but there were no specials listed on the home page. I bet you can guess where I decided to shop.

The prices on Perfumania.com were lower than Amazon.com – not substantially but lower. And free shipping was offered for orders over $60. Yes I was having some second thoughts about my Amazon Prime membership. A free gift was offered as well as samples and they were having a buy one get one for half price special also (something they term BOGO which is not the greatest name I thought as its only one letter away from BOZO).

Off I went placing my order by choosing the cologne I wanted. And then I hit the wall. The site was interminably slow and when I tried to load 2 items into my shopping cart the sands of internet time just kept on spilling. When I hit refresh it took me back a page and I had to enter in all my information a second, (and then third) time! And while I did not want to pay half price for another item of the same sort,( I did like the option however), the instructions were that I would be able to do it at time of order. But I never saw the option once I FINALLY got into the shopping cart.

At last I was able to make my purchase and check out. Yet the experience which had the potential to be a very good one was undermined because of the slow and frustrating performance of the site interface.
It’s something to keep in mind – you can get everything right, but then if you drive the customer crazy by making the navigation or site process difficult you will have more than lost what you gained.

Do you have any good stories to share that illustrate what I am writing about?

With Chinese President Hu Jintao in the United States this week there was much talk about the state of Sino-U.S. relations. My interest in developing our company’s Chinese business has me keeping a watchful eye for business and marketing news in China. I thought it was interesting that during a week of heightened awareness of the U.S.-China relationship, that Alibaba.com and its Chairman Jack Ma would announce they are expanding their supply network in China. http://on.wsj.com/gIPr16. Full disclosure – we’ve had a couple of meetings with Alibaba.com here in the U.S. and I find the Alibaba.com story to be remarkable http://bit.ly/2vZW75.

It’s no trifling investment either. $ 4.6 billion U.S. is a staggering amount of money. The primary benefit is said to be the ability to expand Taobao.com which is Alibaba.com’s Amazon.com-like online shopping mall. I find it interesting that Alibaba.com CEO David Wei W considers Taobao.com to be more like EBay http://bit.ly/SjMep but that is not what most people think today. What also caught my attention was what Mr. Ma was quoted as saying – “In 10 years, we hope that anywhere in China you can buy a product online, and, at the slowest, it will get to your home in eight hours” This is to be somewhat limited to areas in the north like Beijing, and Tianjin, as well as major population centers in the south (Shanghai and Nanjing for instance). The western part of China is not nearly as developed and would be more difficult to cover with an 8 hour delivery promise.

The idea that you could order something online and have it delivered in as little as 8 hours is amazing to me. Back in the mid-1990’s Amazon.com’s CEO Jeff Bezos made a decision to invest in building distribution centers around the United States. This was at the time when Amazon.com primarily sold books and compact discs. Many people questioned the idea outright and many also thought that move would lead to the downfall of Amazon.com. It turned out to be one of the smartest things Mr. Bezos has done. But Amazon has never even tried to offer something like delivering an order in 8 hours.

I think the same thing will happen with Jack Ma’s decision to have Alibaba.com follow a similar path. Yahoo.com continues to own 40% of Alibaba.com (which was founded in 1999) and I have noted before that this might be the reason Yahoo.com CEO Carol Bartz still has her job. Mr. Ma would like to buy back the interest from Yahoo but Ms. Bartz has not acceded.

For the record Alibaba.com has something close to 18,000 employees in 60 cities and regions, including China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And the company is still growing and is headquartered in beautiful Hangzhou in a Silicon Valley like campus.

You will be hearing a lot more from this rising force in the near future. My question to you is have you heard of them before and what is your opinion and impression of the company?

I will readily admit that I am not much of a shopper. If anything I am a buyer which means when I go into a retail establishment my mission is to go directly to what I came for, go directly to the checkout line and get out as quickly as possible.

That plan does not work out so well during the holidays. Yesterday I went into Macy’s in the Stamford Town Center Mall. It was around lunchtime. (Yes I know I have to be nuts). Once in the parking garage it took nearly fifteen minutes to park the car and then only because we saw someone getting into their car to leave and I backed up almost touching the front bumper of the very disappointed driver behind me who thought she had struck gold.

Once inside the mall my wife and I walked directly to Macy’s and directly to the area that had the items what we were looking. We noticed the long line at the cash register and strategized that once we had an idea of what we were buying the other would stand on line. I also noticed that the whole area was surprisingly messy and unkempt. Items were strewn all over the place, mismatched as well. There were a few employees rearranging the items that had been ‘dislodged’.

Everything appeared to be on sale – although it was difficult to tell exactly how much things were being marked down at times. And there was something called a ‘morning special’ which apparently was still in effect even though it was nearly 1 P.M. The one clerk at the register was a very pleasant young guy who handled customers one at a time with particular sense of urgency even though there were no less than six people in line to buy something at any moment. He did connect well with the customers in that he did not rush anyone off and took his time to be sure that each customer had as much time as they felt they needed. After all they had waited fifteen minutes in line.

I’ve shopped a couple of times in retail stores this holiday season and all in all they were experiences that were fine but I have no real need to repeat them. I signed up for Amazon Prime this year and it was a good idea since ‘free shipping’ is offered for $ 79.00 for the entire year and I’ve bought enough items to avoid more shipping charges than $ 79.00. I am certain that some of my retail reticence is gender-related and I am far from being agoraphobic, but when it comes to holiday shopping I think I will just stick with clicking.

Have a great holiday and thanks for reading!

When Amazon.com came out with their recommendation system a number of years ago (strangely this was difficult to find out for certain) I along with many people thought that it was a very cool thing.  Often imitated and seldom duplicated it remains one of the hallmarks of the entire Amazon platform. 

Netflix had a ‘contest’ begun in 2008 with a prize of $ 1,000,000 to replace their movie recommendation system – it was so successful that they are repeating again this year and the money paid out is far less than they would have spend to develop an internal replacement.   For what it is worth I feel that Netflix exhibited crowdsourcing as well as it can be done.  (You can read Jeff Howe’s book if you want to learn more).

Any recommendation system is based on the ‘wisdom’ of the crowd.  But Amazon’s system is getting a little long in the tooth.  I realize that any recommendation system is only as effective as the data it has to leverage.   I don’t give Amazon all that much but every search, every purchase everything I do on their site is tracked and segmented – or at least I expect that it is. 

So why (you might ask) I am questioning Amazon’s recommendation system now?  Well for one thing I searched on an SAT course for my then high school aged son in 2005.  For some reason Amazon continually recommends that I might be interested in purchasing the 2010 version (they also asked that about 2006/7/8 and 9). Since I will assume Amazon is not implying that my son is still trying to excel on the SAT (or that he is an idiot), I postulated that maybe they know at present I have a daughter who is a high school junior.  I checked my profile and nowhere do I mention my daughter (or anyone else family or friends).   Amazon may be good but they’re not that good. 

I also get recommendation for Japanese anime which I bought a book or two more than five years ago but have never purchased a like product since.   Also included in my current recommendations – a Slinky (?), Jimi Hendrix – Valleys of Neptune, (ok I get that since I have bought music like that over the years), and a bunch of books on Direct Marketing – which is totally appropriate even if I have no personal interest in those recommendations. 

What Amazon has failed to ask me is to fill out (I never have) my profile.  If I were them I would even incent me to do so – think of all the MUCH more relevant recommendations they could make if that had some better intelligence.   I would not have to be offered all that much – maybe free shipping on my next order?  I’m not an Amazon Prime member and don’t buy enough to be one.   But with more relevant recommendations I can almost guarantee that I’d buy more and so would other people. 

I have always been a fan of Amazon.com and remain so but they are missing a big opportunity.  If you have had similar or different experiences please share them as I’d love to read them.