Amazon has patented a way to let you return gifts before you even receive them.
Amazon’s innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to “Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred,” the patent says. “For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.
The benefit to the receiver is clear. The benefit to Amazon is even bigger:
The proposal has also brought into focus a very costly part of the e-retailing business model: Up to 30 percent of purchases are returned, and the cost of getting rejected gifts back across the country and onto shelves has online retailers scrambling for ways to reduce these expenses.
To the giver? Think of it as weakly dominating a gift card. It’s a gift card with a default. If gifts are better that gift cards because they allow you to show the recipient something they never would have found/considered on their own, then this system achieves that without the risk of it going badly. Perhaps that allows you to take even more risks with your gifts. Not everyone is happy though.
“This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving,” Post said. “The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world’s transactions.”
Amazon’s system gives users a “Gift Conversion Wizard” through which they can program various rules like “no gifts made of wool” or “Convert any gift from Aunt Mildred to a gift certificate, but only after checking with me.” But what will the giver be told?
Most cleverly – or deviously, depending on your attitude toward this sort of manipulation – the gift giver will be none the wiser: “The user may also be provided with the option of sending a thank you note for the original gift,” according to the patent, “even though the original gift is converted.” (Alternatively, a recipient could choose to let the giver know he has exchanged the item for something else.)
Casquette cast: Courtney Conklin Knapp.
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December 29, 2010 at 2:38 pm
twicker
Interesting, and prompted a couple of thoughts:
1) I’m not sure why this received a patent. It seems rather obvious – interesting, and something other people were not doing yet, but pretty much the sort of thing that, if you’re in the retail business and are thinking about this problem, should occur to you. No matter how much the WaPo article likes to use words like “revolutionize,” I think it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary.
2) I really like the juxtaposition of this article with the Weinstein article you posted earlier (still working my way through that one). With the Weinstein article, I was struck by the passionate defense he gave of gift cards (which have never been one of my favorite gifts). I do think there’s something to getting a physical gift that makes it qualitatively better – when it’s a good gift. For gifts from the Aunt Mildred’s of the world, I can see the Amazon wizard being a boon (assuming that Aunt Mildred uses Amazon, of course). Otherwise, I’m very partial to receiving a gift of the “unexpected awesome;” for example, this Christmas, I’ve received:
1) a Soviet (well, 1992) Vostok Komandirskie submariner watch from my brother-in-law (which I think is awesome, but would never have thought of)
2) a new bathrobe from my fiancee, which, yes, I was thinking of getting anyway, but might not have if I’d been given a gift card instead (I’d be likely to be all practical and crap)
3) new bedroom slippers, also from my fiancee (same personal problem of crappy practicality)
The Vostok watch came about because of my long interest in matters Russian and the bro-in-law’s knowledge of me, along with his personal interest in Russia (he worked there for the EBRD right after the breakup of the USSR; I suspect he bought the 1992 watch on the streets of Moscow in, well, 1992). The latter two gifts likely came about because I recently bought the same things for Liliana, and she recognized that her new ones were a darn sight better than my older ones. I now get to feel (in the most literal, visceral sense) her love every time I wear them. I’m a very lucky man.
But I would not be nearly so lucky if all I’d had was a gift certificate from one of these places, because it wouldn’t be as personal. Admittedly, that doesn’t matter nearly as much in the Aunt Mildred case (obviously, dear Aunt Mildred doesn’t really know me as well as she should in order to be able to give me a meaningful gift), but still — if I then use the gift to, say, buy a book or virtually anything else, I likely won’t think of Aunt Mildred and her attempts at effective gift-giving (futile though they may be). I’ll think of my own actions, not hers. And, if her money gets mixed with someone else’s money (gotta say, Aunt Hermione doesn’t give the best gifts, either; Aunt Dahlia is the only good one of the bunch), well … then is it really Aunt Mildred who gave me the Aeropress Coffee Maker, or did I just buy that for myself? I use my little 4-cup coffee maker in my cubicle, the one Liliana gave me, and I think of her (as I write late into the night). I use the Aeropress that … was paid for by some funds by someone, and I’m not likely to think of anyone.
So: interesting concept, doesn’t seem patent-worthy, and I think people need to use it with care (seems to me there’s a lot of downside risk). After all, when things move from a social exchange to a monetary exchange, they don’t necessarily improve …
December 29, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Äntligen nöjd
Oh America. How broken is your patent system when something like this qualifies?
December 30, 2010 at 11:03 am
Hyena
I think this indicates a difference in psychology between myself and the potential users of the feature–also, possibly, the gift-giving circle. I don’t really see gift-giving as a way to maximize my returns on, say, Christmas. To me, it’s just something people do.
Though, to be fair, I’ve never really gotten a spate of crummy gifts. Most people I know who gave them had abandoned the practice long before I came into the world and went with the cash-and-carry Christmas philosophy.
My father, notoriously, would give a bunch of cheap junk like silly string, board games and so on followed by a stack of Franklins. The idea being that everyone went wild with silly string and water pistols for the day and then bought the permanent gifts they really wanted later.
January 6, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Geneviève
Why don’t Amazon and other sites just use gift registries? Then Aunt Mildred can just check our Nephew Timmy’s Xmas list and pick something out from there. No returns needed, no feelings hurt, everybody wins!
I’m liking the silly string and stack of Franklins idea even better!
In fact, how bout Aunt Mildred pay my car insurance bill for Christmas? I would appreciate that even more, especially in these hard times! Uncle Dave can cover the cell phone bill.