History of Amazon Prime
Ex-Amazon employee, Eugene Wei, wrote this blog where he explained how and why the Amazon Prime scheme came about, and it makes for an interesting read. It started with a question years back: what is the roadblock Amazon would hit if it didn’t change anything about how it worked? The answer: shipping fees . This may sound trivially obvious, but Amazon realized how big a deal (breaker) shipping fees was: “People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree... (even though) even after paying shipping, customers were saving money over driving to their local bookstore to buy a book… That wasn't even factoring in the cost of getting to the store, the depreciation costs on the car, and the value of their time.” It took Amazon several years to find a solution. Yes, years! Their first stab was to launch a scheme called Super Saver Shipping: “If you placed an order of $25 or more of qualified items, which included mostly products in...