May 20, 2007
by James Harmening
This week I am going to delve into some new things coming out of Amazon.com. It is hard to believe, but Amazon has been around for 13 years and went public in May 1997. I have purchased many books on Amazon, and it looks like other offerings are coming down the pike.
The first new offering is groceries. It looks like a new-and-improved Peapod model is coming to the Internet and a warehouse near you. Grocery shopping from Amazon is going to hit your neighborhood soon. While Amazon is taking a crack at the grocery store market, Peapod is trying to make a comeback.
I was a big fan of Peapod in the early days. Nancy and I would sit on the Internet and shop for our food. I would go for the Ho-Ho’s, and she would press the delete button. Thank God there still is a Hostess store nearby. The really nice feature about online shopping for groceries was we were able to get delivery in two to three days. When you are shopping for your food, you don’t want to wait a week.
As Peapod’s schedule went to delivering just one day a week, we eliminated Peapod. I am not sure if Amazon will work on a schedule or if they will deliver more frequently.
The concept of shopping at home and having it delivered is excellent for people who work too much. I hope it works for Amazon. They must have a great delivery schedule and high-quality fruits, meats and vegetables for people to use the service.
Another interesting line of business Amazon is pushing more is reprinting “out-of-print” books. Say your copy of “If I Had A Hammer” was a bit tattered, or you wanted to give it to someone as a graduation present. Amazon can reprint it for you. Amazon is reprinting this book and many others and is selling them to you through their fantastic online book store. So even if a book is out of print, it may be available on Amazon to be reprinted.
The only downside I can see is that the reprints are being done in paperback form, so you won’t get the true hardcover feel that many book lovers adore.
I have a shopping tip for you: If you are interested in purchasing something on Amazon and you have the luxury of waiting a few days, you may get an extra-special discount. Most Web sites, including Amazon, have technology that tracks what you are searching for, what you click on, what reviews you read or leave. With this technology, in order to entice you, the shopping sites will offer you discounts on the items that you have been looking at.
On Amazon, there is a treasure chest at the top of the Web site that allows you to “see” what specials Amazon wants to give you. If you search each day a few times for your item (from the same computer), then your treasure chest probably will give you a bit of a discount on an item you have been searching for.
I have tried this, and my treasure chest now has elliptical exercise machines, kids’ watches and 35 percent off of groceries. Nice!
Next week I will be talking about Zabasearch.com and Web historians, the way-back machine for Web sites (www.waybackmachine.org). Try these out and send me what you have found, and I will include it in next week’s column.