Amazon has developed a ‘mind-reading’ technology that will predict what people want to buy and ship packages even before customers have placed an order.
Amazon has filed a patent for the technology called “anticipatory shipping”. The technology aims to eliminate a major disadvantage of online shopping: customers cannot receive their items immediately after purchase, but must instead wait for the products to be shipped to them.
Amazon will collectively compile data such as product searches, page visits, wish list items, order history, overall time on page, items left in the shopping cart and return history to pre-ship items to closer warehouse locations or even directly to the eventual recipient.
Amazon even plans to measure the length of time that a user’s mouse cursor hovers over an item in order to predict an upcoming purchase.
Within the patent, Amazon doesn’t specify how much time this will save from a typical order. However, if items are always located at the nearest hub, it’s possible that customers will be able to receive their items by the following day or perhaps on the same-day.
By increasing the number of items that are available for same-day delivery, this could help Amazon make Prime memberships even more attractive.