Amazon has filed a new patent that is called “anticipatory shipping,” which would mean Amazon would ship products before users have actually purchased the product. This doesn’t mean you’ll start receiving unannounced packages from the company, however: the patent’s examples illustrate a speculative shipment system that deploys goods to specific geographical areas. This means shipping centers near San Antonio Texas would get more summer and warm weather cloths, compared to New York who would get winter weather.
If a customer in that area places an order that matches a nearby package, it would then be redirected to its final destination. This could cut down on shipping times from 3 to 5 days for normal ground shipping to maybe 1 or 2 days. Address information would be filled out during transit , but its unlikely that Amazon customers will get random delivers at their front door. Amazon has been exploring options to decrease shipping times with ideas such as using drones for same day delivery. With millions of Americans turning to online shopping Amazon needs to explore new ways to get all the products bought online to the customer’s front door faster. After this years shipping problems with Fedex and UPS, which caused thousands of packages to be delayed after their expected shipping times.
The anticipatory shipping along with drones shipping packages the wait times on products could be mere hours or a single day. The patent for this shipping was only filed in December so it could be a while before we see this put in place, and the logistic could cause a large headache for the company. If Amazon continues to improve shipping times people may never or want to leave their house.