Paying a premium

First there was Amazon Prime, then came Asos Premier, now M and M Direct has launched its Premier service, offering customers free express delivery, free returns, priority mailings and exclusive offers.
Amazon Prime, Asos Premier and M and M Direct Premier are membership programmes that charge customers an annual fee for added-value services. Amazon’s service costs £49 a year; Asos currently charges £14.95 and M and M Direct charges £14.99 as an introductory price. But do they represent good deals for the merchant and the consumer?

I looked at joining Amazon Prime, but could not see any immediate benefits as a consumer. Sure, I could get “free one-day delivery on millions of eligible items sold by Amazon.co.uk”, but what about the items sold by third-parties on the site; not all of those are eligible. Not to mention that most items are eligible for Amazon’s free super-saver delivery anyway. I may have to wait up to five days to receive my purchase, but if I wanted it sooner I’d pay the one-off delivery charge. For most items I am happy to wait a few days. Although my family buys a lot on Amazon, I don’t think our shipping costs rack up to £49 a year. Thanks, but no thanks. This offer clearly works out better for Amazon and if people are willing to pay £49 when they could get a very similar service for free, Amazon is definitely the smartest marketer out there.

The Premier offer from apparel etailer Asos is instantly more enticing for consumers. It offers free next-day delivery as well as a returns collection service. I can see the immediate attraction of not having to trudge to the post office to return a parcel. Another benefit, at least for a catalogue nut like me, is that Asos will mail its customer magazine to Premier customers each month. I have bought from Asos a couple of times over the past year or so, but they’ve not sent me a magazine for several months. I was told by a customer services rep that “we send out the magazine every month to a random selection of people who have ordered from us in the last six months. This means that if you keep ordering from us you will receive the Asos magazine,” she directed me to the online version, but it’s just not the same. For £19.95, or even the full price of £24.95, the Asos Premier deal is much better than Amazon’s. As Asos already offers free delivery with no minimum order value, albeit not next-day, I guess the Premier service is a way to reclaim revenue from deliveries. It’s also a great way for Asos to communicate directly with its very best customers. Plenty of online retailers can segment their databases to find out who among their customers buys the most often. But using a service like Premier, Asos knows exactly who its most engaged customers are. To use a much-bandied term, the people who subscribe to a service like Premier are likely “brand advocates”, willing to pay extra for a service from their favourite retailer. Impress these people and they will tell their friends, who may then also join the service, who will tell their friends, and so on.

M and M Direct’s offer is very similar to Asos. It includes free express shipping, free returns, “priority mailings” and exclusive offers. Already, M and M says 50,000 people have signed up to the programme since March. Again, like Asos, M and M calls out receiving regular catalogues as a key benefit. Its non-offer price is £19.99, cheaper than Asos’s full price. The real added benefit here is that M and M Direct normally charges £6.99 for express delivery and £3.99 for standard delivery compared with Asos and Amazon where customers can opt for free delivery on most items. That means that the service essentially pays for itself after just two orders. For regular shoppers, that’s a very tempting deal.

If I genuinely shopped that often with a retailer, paying for a premium service would definitely appeal. It’s a concept that would work for anything purchased regularly--pet supplies, vitamins and supplements, home-office supplies, childrenswear and baby products, and so much more. If margins permit, we may see many more of this premium services crop up. After all, there’s nothing customers love more than being treated like VIPs.--MT

The good, the bad, and the huh?

A few comments on catalogues and emails that arrived at Catalogue e-business HQ this week.

First, the good: “Do we look good naked?” retail supplies cataloguer Morplan asks on the inside front cover of its October issue. It had mailed the catalogue without a plastic wrap, you see. “Did your copy arrive in good condition or should we stay covered up” the note continues. “Please let us know at naked@morplan.com.” I like this for two reasons: 1) Mailing without a polybag is more environmentally friendly, and 2) Morplan is asking for customers’ feedback on the move. Much as I loathe when catalogues come entombed in plastic (it’s just more flotsam to rip open and discard), I can appreciate that not everyone agrees with me. By asking its clients for feedback, Morplan shows that it values their input and, by extension, their custom.

Next, the bad: “We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated The Wanderers (Bloomsbury Classic Reads) by Richard Price have also purchased Rays by Richard Price,” begins an email from Amazon.co.uk. The message includes a link to Rays, which is scheduled to be released next week, and suggests I preorder a copy. Now, if Rays has not yet been published, how could people have already bought it? And more to the point, the Richard Price who wrote The Wanderers, a gritty novel (and one that I gave four stars, by the way), is not the same Richard Price who wrote Rays, a book of poetry described as “a wry and tender lover’s gift”. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of readers of Richard Price I and Richard Price II, the circles probably wouldn’t even touch, let alone overlap. I’d complained about Amazon’s dodgy product recommendations before; this seems to confirm that while it owns leagues of customer and product data, Amazon doesn’t really know what all the info means.

And now, the huh?: A 20-page Christmas edition of the Viking Direct catalogue includes two pages of Wii games, two pages of additional games, a page of kiddie electronics, and a page of DVDs. Viking, of course, is a direct seller of office supplies. Is the company really suggesting that office managers should stock up on boxed sets of Shameless DVDs and Hannah Montana karaoke systems in addition to wall planners and toner cartridges?--SC

Use the data, Amazon

As a long-time loyal Amazon customer, I sometimes wonder just how personalised its product recommendations are. I rate books on the site assiduously, even those I haven’t bought from Amazon, and I’ve penned my share of reviews. So Amazon certainly has a great deal of data on my literary preferences.

Yet it didn’t seem to take that information into account prior to sending me its latest email of fiction recommendations. Of the eight books featured, I’d rated three of them on the site, and one of the titles—the book that featured in the subject line, oddly enough—I had just bought from Amazon last month. In fact, I'd even posted a rave review of the book on the site.

I don’t mind when the Amazon recommendation engine suggests I buy a book that I would read only if every other bit of reading material in the world--including cereal boxes and flat-pack furniture instructions--had been destroyed. In fact, sometimes when I have insomnia I visit Amazon.co.uk just to see what recommendations it has for me.

But I do mind when a company with which I have spent a significant portion of my disposable income tries to sell me the exact item I’d purchased from it only a few weeks earlier, especially when said company has the technology and data to avoid doing so.--SC

A howl of a product

Still not convinced that user reviews can boost traffic to and sales on your website? Then consider the current best-selling apparel item on Amazon.com: the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt.

You won't see this shirt featured in Vogue or in Harrods; as blogger Michael K of Dlisted (where I came across this marvel) writes, "don't act like you've never worn this shirt with denim cut-offs and wedge sandals while working the ho stroll in Panama City Beach, FL". Even Homer Simpson wouldn't wear this T, though Cletus definitely would.

The only reason this item could possibly have topped Amazon's apparel list has to be the product reviews--319 and counting.

A sampling: "After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women... The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth..."

"I am a member of Parliment and bought this T Shirt on my expenses. Since wearing this in the House, I have had a strange longing for roadkill and burgers..."

"So I tracked my package before I left for work today and realized that it would be delivered around 1pm. Around noon I told my manager my dad fell off a ladder and that I had to leave work to take him to the hospital. Pulling out of Taco Hell all I could think of was 3 Woof Moon shirt and where to make the public debut, and that 3WM would give me the guts to ask Tonya the deep fry girl to a drive-in movie tomorrow..."

"Before the 3 wolves and moon t-shirt I was just a crazy cat lady wearing 'hang in there' kitten t-shirts. Now that I wear my 3 wolves and moon t-shirt people definitely take me more seriously. Especially that lady that keeps calling from the electric company. If I'm really lucky I'll have the confidence to leave the house soon too..."

If Amazon had censored the comments--and many of them are much too rude for me to repeat here--there's no way it would have sold so many of these shirts. So let's chalk one up to the power of unadulterated user-generated content. And when you have a few minutes, check out some of the other comments on the shirt's product page. Just don't blame me if you fall under the spell of the three wolves and find yourself howling at the moon.--SC

This is 2009, not 1959

Nicky Epstein's Knitted Flowers. The Garden Planner. Sweet and Simple Party Cakes. These are among the items that Amazon.co.uk recommends as Mother's Day gifts. I can't think of a single mother I know who would want one of those tomes--or any of the other suggested cookbooks, crafts manuals, or gardening guides--as a Mother's Day gift. Why not just buy Mum a skillet or a bag of compost instead?

(To my husband and daughter: If you're planning on buying me a Mother's Day gift, opt for this or this over this--unless you want to feast on gruel for the foreseeable future.)--SC