[Sigia-l] Amazon Prime (subscription-like service) - an innovation?

[mary at maryaustin-keller.com]

> Has anyone tried this yet
> (http://www.amazon.com/gp/subs/primeclub/signup/main.html)?  I'd
> imagine you'd have to shop quite a bit to make it worth your while...
> but here's a snip from the welcome message I just received:

Yep, I signed up this weekend.  At first glance it seems expensive - $79
for free shipping on most things (I think if it's listed with a 3rd party,
like J&R Music World, the free shipping doesn't count).

However, it's free **2-Day** shipping on ANY dollar amount.  Amazon's
usual free shipping is on orders over $25 and you have to wait for forever
for Amazon to actually ship it out - so long that I tend to go to buy.com
and order there, where things are sent out the same time, regardless of
free or paid shipping.   So, I want that $7 brain-candy fiction novel?  I
can have it in 2 days for no additional shipping cost.  Overnight is just
$4 per item.

The innovation?  Customers who check multiple sites for the best price and
grumble over how long Amazon takes to ship out the free-shipping-packages
into are turned into loyal Amazon customers.

As for the interface, it appeared to only change the page where I both
review my shopping cart and choose a shipping method.  2-day is selected
by default and in the upper right corner is a little box explaining that I
have this membership.  Anything that doesn't count for free shipping under
this membership is under a separate heading at the bottom.  I will say I
only noted this when I saw a shipping cost and then went to investigate. 
However, I imagine they want to "hide" this as much as they can (after
all, $79 a year isn't a tiny amount).

> Is this really an innovation?  Think they'll try to patent it?  It's
> different from Netflix in that the annual fee only covers shipping on
> products whereas something like Netflix covers the rental of the
> product and the shipping...  It seems like if anything it'll clutter
> up an already unwieldy interface...

I don't think it's an innovation in design or interaction, I think it's an
innovation in marketing and building customer loyalty.

It did appear to add some amount of clutter, but not so much that I was
annoyed.  However, until this weekend, I would not consider myself to be a
loyal Amazon customer and therefore can't compare and contrast the
interface with and without this membership.

In short, it was cluttered, but then I think Amazon's interface IS cluttered.

Anyone else try it?

~Mary
--
Mary Austin-Keller
mary at maryaustin-keller.com