Amazon Offers Prime Service To Previously Neglected Black Communities

The American online retailer to provide its Prime facility to the South side of Chicago, Bronx and Boston neighborhood of Roxbury

Amazon will offer same-day delivery service to the Bronx and the South side of Chicago, after being criticized by elected members that the data-driven service limitations of the organization left out a number of minority communities unjustly.

The American e-commerce company has promised to extend its free same-delivery facility in at least three cities after Bloomberg News conducted an analysis that laid emphasis on racial differences in places where the facility was offered in a number of cities including Washington, New York, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and Altanta.

The online retailer promised to deliver quickly to the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, which is pre-dominated by the black community recent week after being criticized for excluding it. Then the online retailer promised to bring the facility to the Bronx- the only city borough of New York excluded and the South side of Chicago, in letters written on April 29 to elected representatives of those regions.

The company started to offer its same-day delivery facility free of charge as a benefit of being an Amazon Prime member, which is offered at a price of $99 per year. It is currently offered in 27 metropolitan cities. The determination of the service boundaries were done by the number of Prime members in every region, nearly to warehouses where items are stored and the ability of the organization to look for delivery partners to serve a particular area.

US Representative Rush, who is an Illinois democrat advised the Federal Trade Commission to probe the same- day delivery limitations of Amazon to find out whether they were unjust or if the organization is employing misleading business practices that breach federal legislations. The Seattle based organization promised to offer the facility to the Bronx and the South side of Chicago “in coming weeks,” in similar letters written by Brian Huseman, who is the organization’s VP of public policy, to political leaders in those regions.

Race did not take part in the procedure, Amazon stated. In most cities, including San Francisco, Philadelphia and Seattle, the online trading platform operator offered the facility throughout the region and there weren’t disparities. The company has highlighted that it’s a growing and new facility with limitations that are extending with the passage of time.

The Bloomberg Businessweek analysis laid emphasis upon how a number of data based decisions can lead to racially disparate results. Data scientists are studying that more closely in an effort to avoid such untargeted bias. Dinowitz and Diaz stated they were happy the web retailer is extending the facility to the Bronx. 

Amazon Prime Adds More Than 3 Million Members Before Christmas

Amazon has increased its Prime members by more than 3 million at peak of holiday shopping season.

Amazon has made an addition of more than 3 million new members of Amazon Prime across the globe in just 7 days at the peak of the holiday buying season in 2015. It is the most recent sign of expansion for the Seattle based organization’s $99 per year free video subscription and shipping service, which has played a key role in driving its business.

The electronic commerce enterprise did not officially disclose the actual figure of Amazon Prime members, just stating it is in “tens of millions”, but one analyst estimated in September that there were 60 million to 80 million Prime members across the world before the beginning of the holiday season. Comparatively, Netflix reported 69 million members globally.

It is the most recent sign of a fruitful holiday and the end of eventful years in the history of the ecommerce giant. In its core online trading business, the organization is making efforts to extend its online lead over conventional rivals, such as Wal-Mart and Target, whereas eyeing new competitor, Jet.com.

While continuing its yearly tradition, Amazon issued an epic post-holiday press release, featuring cherry-picked statistics of growth and whimsically imprecise factoids like “Assuming the average customer moisturizes twice per day, Amazon sold enough O’Keefe’s Hand and Foot Cream to provide a lifetime supply to the entire Seattle Seahawks football team roster.”

Finally, in typical fashion of Amazon, no details regarding the cumulative figure of the service’s subscribers have been disclosed, though it looks to be a “record-breaking holiday season”. The company pointed towards the higher levels of holiday sales through Prime, with the provision of actual sales figures.

“Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday, and members doubled their viewing hours of Prime Video compared to last year with the Amazon Original Series ‘The Man in the High Castle’ leading the way as the most watched TV season ever on Prime Video,” stated the corporation’s CEO Jeff Bezos in the press release.

Last holiday, Amazon described the new Prime members’ figure in a different manner, claiming instead that “10 million new members worldwide tried Prime for the first time” during the holiday season of 2014. It has also disclosed that almost 70% of Amazon customers shopped through a smartphone this holiday. In 2014, the figure was nearly 60%. The enterprise does not know the number of those who went ahead of browsing and really purchased goods through mobile.

Tech Crunch has reported that members of prime were able to make ‘The Man in the High Castle’ the most viewed television season on Prime Video this holiday.

Amazon.com Serious About Its Own Air Delivery System

The retail giant is testing its own air delivery service for the transportation of parcels from the United States to the United Kingdom.

In hopes of starting its own air freight business, Amazon.com has been going back and forth to the United Kingdom since November, according to Evening Standard. The retail giant has been taking these parcels from the United States to the UK quite discretely as they don’t want the public to be aware of transportation service as yet. It has managed to transport a number of parcels, trying to get experience in the delivery service first before it makes it official in front of its customers.

As per the report by Evening Standard, there have been five flights weekly that transport these parcels from the US to the UK. The route taken by the plane is from Portland to Luton along with East Midlands and Doncaster airports. The return route that the flight is taking has been from Kassel in Germany back to Portland. The flights have been made to land close to fulfillment centers in Europe as they have been strategically worked on and would help in reducing transport cost as well.

There are two major Amazon warehouses in the United Kingdom which are located at Swansea and Dunfermline – which is as big as 14 football pitches combined. The other locations of the warehouses that are in London are Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead.

These flights, by the retail giant have been booked via DB Schenker which is a logistics company in Germany. The logistics company is planning on starting its operations in Italy and Spain as well, which is news that adds up to the retail business’s news of launching its own delivery service. In order to delay third party deliverers, the e-commerce company is also working on starting its own freight service due to which it is in talks with Atlas Air and Air Transport Services Group – ATSG.

The retailer had planned to start its own service by as soon as January 2016 by hiring 20 Boeing Co 767 aircrafts for in-house deliveries. In case the company starts to act on its own service by hiring these jets, it will be saving a lot of cost of its fast growing transport costs.

This news has come into attention ever since the e-retailer started to have problems with UPS – United Parcel Services. UPS was helping Amazon make its deliveries but it disappointed the company by sending in late deliveries. Given that Amazon is one of UPS’s major customers; they should really work on building a healthier relationship with the retailer.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both the executive directors of the companies have had talk regarding the fiction between the two them. Due to the increase demand during the holiday season, the retail giant needed a delivery service provider who the organization could completely rely on.