{"id":3551,"date":"2015-07-15T20:05:46","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T04:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanford.edu\/group\/sdgc\/cgi-bin\/ycisl\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2015-07-18T19:14:32","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T03:14:32","slug":"amazon-prime-day-case-study-in-overpromise-underdeliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/?p=3551","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Prime Day: Case Study in Overpromise, Underdeliver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"amazonprimedayfail\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, Wednesday July 15, 2015, is Amazon Prime Day. It was supposed to be a “Black Friday”-type special shopping day for those signed up for the Amazon Prime service.<\/p>\n

Our household has been an Amazon Prime subscriber for a few years and so far it’s felt all right – mainly for the fast delivery. The excitement over\u00a0Amazon Unlimited Prime Instant Video has long faded into irrelevance. My spouse and kids nibble on\u00a0Netflix during the \u00a0holidays and I have found all I care to consume at DramaFever. Then again, fast delivery was the Amazon standard before they introduced Amazon Prime, so service took a step back first before taking a step forward – and they basically are coming out $99 richer every year without doing anything extra. Well believe it or not, there are worse deals out there where people have figured out how to get your money by providing you the same or less service than before their fees.<\/p>\n

Let me also say though that there are a number of things I do like about Amazon and it is #3 only to my shopping at Costco and factory outlets. I do really like their no-fuss return process as well as the customer reviews service. Pricing is also seriously competitive most of the time (wish it was all of the time).<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to Amazon Prime Day. This was a seriously bad day for customer experience. Where the expectation was to find compelling shopping deals (like on Black Friday), there was more\u00a0disappointment than satisfaction to be had.\u00a0Up front, let me say that I think deals disappearing quickly is not entirely Amazon’s fault. There has to be some stock limit and it really depends on demand and the quick shall have it. The problem probably was that the quick were people looking to re-sell items later at regular prices and make a quick profit (and hence the positive PR about sales on this day) – it probably wasn’t as much to end users as to prospective profiteers.<\/p>\n

I take issue more with the plethora of different third-party Sellers engaged in Amazon Prime Day and the inability to tell if there was any real discount because of Amazon Prime Day. We know from services such as CamelCamelCamel that Amazon prices fluctuate regularly, but we could not really tell how good the sale price was unless we checked something like CamelCamelCamel. This was just a jumbled presentation and the air quickly left the balloon. Our household did not buy anything on Amazon Prime Day.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, I judge Amazon Prime Day to have been a case of overpromise and undeliver. A pretty nasty blunder in mismanaging expectations and presentation. They lost our attention within about 2 minutes.<\/p>\n

In YCISL, we coach using a grab and monitoring “eye contact” to ensure that attention is not lost. Amazon.com, once the premier example of user persuasion, failed badly this day. Let’s move on. Accidents happen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Related News Stories:<\/p>\n

Amazon Prime Day Recap: Sold-Out Kindles, Wait Lists, Facebook ‘Fail’<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon Gets Defensive As Customers Criticize Prime Day<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Wednesday July 15, 2015, is Amazon Prime Day. It was supposed to be a “Black Friday”-type special shopping day for those signed up for the Amazon Prime service. Our household has been an Amazon Prime subscriber for a few years and so far it’s felt all right – mainly for the fast delivery. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3569,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions\/3569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}