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Before the pandemic, my household purchased items online for delivery perhaps 1x per week. Now, it's 2-3x per day. Clothing, LPs, pearl milk tea, ... This is a

Before the pandemic, my household purchased items online for delivery perhaps 1x per week. Now, it's 2-3x per day. Clothing, LPs, pearl milk tea, ... This is a behavioral change that is playing out worldwide. I'd certainly expect people to head back into retail stores once the virus is spent, but they will also likely continue purchasing a higher portion of overall shopping online, simply because they've been forced to learn that for many, the experience is satisfactory. This is something they may not have previously realized. What I wonder is, where is the labor shift happening? Warehouses need management, delivery needs drivers, live customer service is still valuable for handling corner case complaints & returns. Can cashiers and floor salespersons and store managers take those jobs? Even a town of, say, 25,000 needs drivers to deliver. How much of the brick-n-mortar workforce can be absorbed in this phase of Internet Automates Everything?

walkingolof 6y ago
2-3 times per day? Until transports are carbon neutral, free shipping should be made illegal....
- rat9988 6y ago
  Using cars too I'd guess then?
  - walkingolof 6y ago
    Cars are not free, one of the biggest household budget posts.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      what's a budget post? I don't think I've ever heard that term before.
  - Agreed99 6y ago
    Sure, why not It is nothing more than an entitled demand of a minority of the species that can afford them Why should that be justification enough to destroy the planet for the entire species?
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  Amazon is probably batching a lot of these orders into one delivery.
  - RobinL 6y ago
    I'm really curious about this. I've noticed though time Amazon seem to be batching orders less often (This is in the UK, and merely anecdotal.) I was recently looking at the courier's parcel tracking app, i was interested recently to see that my delivery was '120 stops away'. If this is typical, the marginal cost of delivering a parcel must be small in terms of miles driven and driver time. (Obviously this is highly contingent on population density). Another good example of this is Royal Mail, where the cost of a marginal piece of post or small parcel must be tiny (since the postman is already delivering to 50%+ addresses every day). It occurred to me that in some situations, it might actually be more efficient _not_ to batch. The complexity of attempting to batch at the warehouse must be very high, and take up quite a bit of warehouse space, and slow down dispatch significantly. A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. This seems to suggest that the volume of parcels means that we're already in a situation where couriers are pretty efficient and marginal costs are low. It'd be interesting to know empirically how this works out.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      > A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. I think you are onto something, that the courier business enjoys huge advantage from economies of scale. However, I think that there is no actual monopoly, because the advantage of higher volume in last-mile delivery probably saturates fast enough that you can take it all at relatively low total levels of volume. For example, if you have higher volumes, you can optimize courier routes so that they waste less time driving around. However, at some point fixed per-package overhead like parking getting in and out of the truck, walking up to front door, etc become so large that time spent actually moving between deliveries becomes smaller and smaller part of your time, and so optimizing it becomes less and less valuable. Then, the issue is how much volume you need to hit that level, and I think that the answer is "much less than monopoly level".
- ericmay 6y ago
  It's not like Amazon (or others) dispatch one truck with one item per order. They will batch these to save cost, and I have to imagine it's more carbon friendly than having an individual car from every household making trips, parking in parking lots, etc. etc.
  - untog 6y ago
    I’m consistently surprised by how bad Amazon is at this. Admittedly this might be because I’m in NYC and there are multiple distribution centers but even when I specifically choose to have things bundled up and delivered at once on my “Prime Day” (or whatever they call it) they still deliver separately on different days. Not the end of the world but it does annoy me. I’ve been doing a bunch of shopping at Target since the pandemic too, to balance out reliance on Amazon. They’re much better at delivering items together on the day they originally state.
    - mynameishere 6y ago
      Try ordering online from Walmart. You might order five items and get four packages in four days. Amazon used to be like this 15+ years ago.
- siliconmountain 6y ago
  A delivery to ten houses from one delivery truck is less carbon than ten household cars driving to the store (10 roundtrips). Or more likely, 2-3 different stores per each household. What you propose would reverse that and increase carbon. Its also worth pointing out theyre moving to electric delivery vans
  - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
    But it's also an example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - tgv 6y ago
    That would entirely depend on the distance to the store, and the assumption you'd always use a car.
    - moooo99 6y ago
      > the assumption you'd always use a car. which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone - living in a rural area - living only close to a city but not within - city parts with poor public transport connections Also, the kind of product also heavily influences that. For more specialized products, people tend to be willing to drive longer distances, therefore making the carbon emissions worse. If the store doesn't carry the item but has to order it first, it also means you double the round trips. Overall, Amazon certainly has a massive environmental impact, including GHG emissions, but in terms of emissions, everyone going to the store by themselves wouldn't really be a better option I imagine.
      - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
        > which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone Absolutely not. There's plenty of people who live without needing cars.
        pdpi 6y ago
        The gp itemised which sorts of people they were talking about
- cm2012 6y ago
  It's way more carbon efficient than driving to three different stores in a day yourself.
  - joijoiwejrr 6y ago
    But far less carbon-efficient than just not buying so much unnecessary crap in the first place.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      Moralizing hasn't solved the obesity crisis, so I don't think it will solve the climate crisis either.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Good point, let's also make driving yourself to the store illegal unless you hit a minimum item count while there. Companies already have a natural incentive to batch orders, because doing so reduces their costs. I don't think you need to lean on them to do what they already want to do.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    I have a better idea. Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment, and then people can do it as much as they damn well please.
    - moooo99 6y ago
      Considering the overall environmental impact of any personal vehicle on the street, regardless of power source, that seems like a close to impossible task. Public transit seems like a promising solution, but only goes so far. With the strong automotive industry here in Germany, there is no incentive to get cars off the streets.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment. Impossible. Even if the car is powered by renewable electricity, each trip to the store contributes to wear and tear on the vehicle, and the parts on the vehicle were almost certainly not produced with renewable energy but with polluting sources, and plus the industrial process producing them likely produces some toxic waste.
      - repsilat 6y ago
        They meant by pricing the externalities. An emissions trading scheme can mean that carbon-emitting activities just displace each other. A carbon tax can mean that carbon-emitting activities can result in net reductions in emissions. Road user charges, taxes on vehicles bought, you get the picture.
- mgraupner 6y ago
  I wish Amazon would offer some "green" packaging for items not needed immediately. Pool them and then send them out together, not in 5 different packages by 3 delivery companies.
  - lyngford 6y ago
    They do offer that in the Amazon Day program - "Order throughout the week and select FREE Amazon Day Delivery to get all your items in fewer boxes on a single day"
    - mgraupner 6y ago
      Cool, may I ask in which country you live? Unfortunately it's not (yet) available here in Germany.
      - maskedinvader 6y ago
        This seems to be available only in US unfortunately. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-choose-a-weekly-delivery-date-with-launch-of-amazon-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-c...
    - lkbm 6y ago
      I ordered some Christmas presents to be delivered to my parents' house yesterday and was amused to see that I could choose to have them delivered on my Amazon Day. Seems like Amazon Day should be tied to an address, not an account, but I guess it's an edge-case not worth addressing.
  - badwolf 6y ago
    In addition to the other commenter's "Amazon Day Delivery" option, I often also have another option of "No rush delivery" which usually includes $1-$5 credit for digital items (ebooks, music, movies...) - https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3 https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3
  - i_love_music 6y ago
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  Or... we could just tax carbon.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    This is what everyone thinks is the only solution, the issue is that it will have different winners and losers than today. And some of the current winners that will be losers have immense political capital and are willing to spend it.
    - NumberWangMan 6y ago
      I don't think it's the only solution, but it's pretty much a necessary part of any comprehensive plan of attack. It's the best tool we have. You're totally right that some current "winners" who benefit from the current state of affairs are fighting and will continue to fight it. That's the case of any major change worth making, though, I think.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      So we just pay the losers a fee to go away. If that means giving Exxon, BP, Shell ... a trillion dollars to just cap all their wells and F'off.... fine. Amortize it over 100 years and pay it down with the tax revenue from carbon.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        Fine. As long as we also charge them damages for lying to the public about climate change for all these years.
        anonuser123456 6y ago
        Consumers willingly purchase and burn hydrocarbons. Joe average consumer is as culpable as some C-suite executive. And the only viable alternative until very recently... nuclear... is endlessly disparaged as unsafe by 'save the earth' types. So as far as I'm concerned, the green movement is equally culpable on the lying front. Should we charge the Sierra Club luddites too?
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  And once again the responses are about personal rights and freedoms while ignoring the good of society and the planet. This is exactly why developing countries tell first-world countries to shove their lofty and hypocritical demands for others to reduce their carbon footprint. If first-world countries and their citizens can't be bothered to reduce their consumption and behavior, why should developing nations? Especially the comments about "batching orders" somehow having an impact is just ludicrous. Aren't we in a thread about a company forced to hire more people because of the amount of orders coming in, forcing more deliveries? How does it not click in your brains that more orders = more boxes = more resource consumption = more drives = more weight = more fuel consumption = more carbon?
- sib 6y ago
  They do a lot of work to combine multiple orders placed within short windows (motivated by cost savings, rather than carbon savings, but the effect is the same)...
petra 6y ago
~450,000 employees over 300M people, equals about 37 employees over 25K people. Plus 500K delivery drivers , it's another 37 employees. So 74 employees. How many did work retail in that 25K town ?
- lagadu 6y ago
  450k employees globally, not just in the US.
- foota 6y ago
  In fairness, not all the employees in a town work for one company, and Amazon isn't all there is now in that hypothetical town.
  - javajosh 6y ago
    The point is that the retail service industry was a big source of "bullshit jobs" that America needs to a) keep wealth distribution reasonable^, and b) keep people believing that success is all about hard work and gumption&. ^ There are differing opinions on what is "reasonable". & It sometimes is, but is usually about circumstance.
  - karatinversion 6y ago
    javajosh, you seem to have a very strange model of the motives of managers in retail, a famously low-margin business.
- mgraupner 6y ago
  I guess this is added global workforce, not US.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    I'd imagine the vast majority of that was in the US, since while Amazon operates in many countries, in most it's only a pale shadow of the US juggernaut. For example, in Singapore it's nearly useless for anything except books, and even there local inventory is pretty sad.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
There should be less jobs in the switch; that's how automation is supposed to work, after all, increasing efficiency and whatnot. The bigger question is whether the total number of jobs in the economy will stay high enough to not have permanent mass unemployment. My guess is, "yes it will, for now at least".
- jillesvangurp 6y ago
  Most of these jobs are long term indeed going to be automated away. Order picking in a warehouse is still difficult enough that it involves some people but it's not hard to see how that could be reduced over time. Driving delivery vans is also an obvious candidate for getting automated away. However, short term this is just Amazon responding to increased demand because of Corona. Mass unemployment would get accompanied by mass loss of disposable income, so that would actually be bad for Amazon. Automating the supply kind of automates away some of the demand. The notion of bullshit jobs is basically about people doing busy work without actually doing or producing anything of real value. The industrial revolution produced a lot of that already. There's going to be more of it. Easy to predict, because there already is a lot of it. IMHO the lockdown kind of revealed just how pointless some of our jobs really are. Masses of people suddenly worked from home and it did not really disrupt a lot of the supply chains or economy. Instead of being useless in some cubicle, people now got to be useless at home. Technically that should have been a huge productivity hit; except a lot of these people were never really that productive to begin with. The most important thing these people do in our economy is spending.
  - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    > Technically that should have been a huge productivity hit ....unless of course most of those jobs can be done effectively remotely. If we'd instead had all the people now WFH not work at all the economy would look a bit different today, even if you'd kept sending them paychecks.
  - crispyporkbites 6y ago
    > Mass unemployment would get accompanied by mass loss of disposable income, so that would actually be bad for Amazon This is nonsense. You’re saying Amazon should keep paying wages so people can use those wages to shop at Amazon. When put that way you can see it makes no sense. The only thing that matters is that as we increase productivity the benefits are relatively evenly shared. If a 4 or 3 day week becomes normal for everyone and we still output the same or even more, that’s great.
deleted 6y ago
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qz2 6y ago
Yep. This is a massive shift. My amazon order stats are: 2020 - 235 2019 - 107 2018 - 91 2017 - 112 2016 - 34 2015 - 39 2014 - 53 Note the two step jumps. I broke my arm at the start of 2017 for ref. Edit: also to note I've had two (yes just two) issues with Amazon in that time and they just sent new items the next day without argument. Retail has been a shit show on that front for years. I remember standing in Argos arguing with the manager because the DVD player I bought had broken with one of my DVDs inside it and he wouldn't replace it until I'd got it out and I couldn't get it out because the thing had no release hole.
- gogopuppygogo 6y ago
  I have hated most in store retail experiences my entire life. The staff are low paid and hate their jobs. They are forced to create uncomfortable interactions with shoppers. The big box stores like Macy’s are often dirty and smell bad. Aside from trying on clothes, I don’t know why anyone would shop in a store.
  - tehlike 6y ago
    Now that low paid workers are away from eye sight
- indymike 6y ago
  The's a lot driving this change. Shipping costs, shipping speed, selection, membership and retail's refusal to adapt to change. Ecommerce, and not just Amazon, has in many ways become a better experience. Will be interesting to see how retail adapts because at the core, selling something for more than you paid for it is really what business is.
- ptr 6y ago
  That's a lot of orders. It seems like many people are buying a lot of things and I'm just gobsmacked that you can come up with so many things to buy! I mean, I order groceries once a week online, but what are the _things_ that people buy? I buy things maybe three times a year in total (excluding things that are necessary for the household, like glue and leather oil).
wolco2 6y ago
I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. I find their delivery times dropping.. Last order, I ordered and paided more for same day rush.. that came by the end of the next day instead. They gave a $10 coupon but I literally picked the product based on it arriving that day and would have made a different purchasing choose if I knew it was coming tomorrow.
- moooo99 6y ago
  Had the same experience here. Same day shipping has very limited availability here in Germany with a fairly limited inventory, most items are next day shipping. I ordered a product at 3AM with a huge text claiming "same day delivery when ordering within the next 5h". The order arrived at 8PM the next day, which was relatively annoying considering the same day arrival heavily influenced my purchasing decision.
- greggturkington 6y ago
  The majority of my "next-day" and "2-day" orders have been late (often cancelled) for months.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Well, Amazon did say this would occur for non necessity items months ago because of the huge demand strain put on their system, which is exactly what this article is about.
    - greggturkington 6y ago
      Who cares? It's a competitive advantage they no longer have and less value for my expensive Prime subscription
- crazygringo 6y ago
  > Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. If you ignore shipping, maybe sometimes. But I still find that 99% of the time, for items on Amazon.com that are sold by Amazon.com, it's cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping, while most others site charge $7-10 shipping or have a minimum of $75-100 for free shipping. And even if you don't have Prime, the minimum for free shipping is just $25, and you can pretty much always add in stuff that you need to buy soon anyways (shampoo, paper towels, whatever). And delivery times usually has zero to do with Amazon, obviously, they're best in class. With the pandemic and all, UPS and USPS are obviously straining in general. It's not like Wal-Mart, Kohl's, or any other online stores are any better. Despite their advertising, everyone knows you shouldn't be expecting UPS/USPS packages to be reliably arriving on time since March.
xoxoy 6y ago
I’ve honestly found online shopping to become increasingly anti-consumer. The absolute worst trend is what I would consider to be aggressive dynamic pricing, especially on Amazon.
- ArtDev 6y ago
  Where specific items cost double on Amazon? Yeah, its better to shop around. For me, Amazon has become very slow since the pandemic. I only shop on Amazon when I can't find it elsewhere
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pixl97 6y ago
  I don't think you've been in stores much then. The entire experience is designed to be anti consumer and to trigger impulse purchases as much as possible. Some would say this is the impact of late stage capitalism. There is no money left to be made on conventional purchases, but instead the profit is in trickery or deception.
- alacombe 6y ago
  That's actually perfect, as you can game the system for non-immediate items.
blargmaster42_8 6y ago
This is part of the plan... destroy independent retailers and centralise control
SmokeyHamster 6y ago
Yeah, I'm really surprised by how dependent I've become on Amazon, a company I don't even really trust. The convenience can't be understated, especially as it's not really apparent until you start buying a lot from a site like Amazon. I didn't realize I hate shopping in a physical store until I started using Amazon. You spend 99% of your time either wandering through aisles trying to find what you want (which they usually don't have) or waiting in the checkout line. Neither of those things apply to online shopping. The biggest hassle when shopping online is having to login and navigate to dozens, if not hundreds of different websites, re-entering your personal info each time. But a site like Amazon is the Internet equivalent of a department store that has everything, so you only have to login once. Even if Amazon's prices are the same as physical stores, or even a little more, the time I save not having to drive in traffic and waste walking around a store or standing in lines still makes it worthwhile.
- burnthrow 6y ago
  You never even have to leave your chair, it's the future.
seanwilson 6y ago
> Before the pandemic, my household purchased items online for delivery perhaps 1x per week. Now, it's 2-3x per day. Clothing, LPs, pearl milk tea, ... What are you ordering per day? I'm happy knowing that I can survive not leaving the house if I need to by doing a single bulk online food shop once every two or three weeks. Then I might need the odd delivery for broken light bulbs and things I couldn't foresee. I also don't need a car at all as there's enough shops in walking distance and decent public transport. I second the concerns about the carbon footprint of frequent orders. At the very least, people should try to do bulk orders and avoid buying stuff they don't need. Driving around 3 times a day to buy stuff shouldn't be the norm either.
- zests 6y ago
  How many trips to the store do these deliveries save? If I order something small it likely hitches a ride with my neighbors delivery and the delivery of the package itself will have negligible carbon footprint.
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    How much extra packaging are you introducing with many small orders vs bulk orders? Food shops in the UK can deliver without any bags at all for example. A single bottle of something from Amazon for instance will likely come in a cardboard box with some kind of plastic bubble wrap. And is it really true that the driver is going to have items to delivery to almost every block of houses every day? Not everyone is shopping from the same retailer either.
    - ChickeNES 6y ago
      > And is it really true that the driver is going to have items to delivery to almost every block of houses every day? Not everyone is shopping from the same retailer either. My apartment literally has Amazon drivers coming twice a day with a cart full of packages
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  Pandemic-style living with wife & 2 adult, self-sufficient daughters. All 3 of them working from home and shopping for entertainment & to battle boredom. Those items above are examples of what actually shows up at the front door. Groceries as well, either from Costco (usually a large order) or Whole Foods (for stuff they can't get at Costco). Sometimes baking HW (a new hobby for one of them). Sometimes, it's boyfriends that drop off Trader Joe's or In-n-Out... None of us have set foot in a store since March.
tpmx 6y ago
Sweden (in the countryside): Local smallish grocery stores have expanded their order-online-and-pickup-outside offerings massively. Also a lot of hiring of low skilled labor to do the picking. One of the nearby grocery stores I shop at even rented a chiller container as overflow for pickup storage over the spring/summer/autumn. Edit: The reason these small stores have been able to do so: They are franchise stores in a chain a with a big enough national presence that's able to do software development. Or just owned outright by a large central outfit. They have some kind of centralized inventory management.
dheera 6y ago
> satisfactory No just satisfactory, but retail stores also need to learn that if they want my business they need to have interesting, quality products. My local hardware store only has Philips drywall screws. Guess what, Philips heads are shit, that's why I'll even wait 2 days to get Torx head screws from Amazon. Hardware store wants my business? Learn that Philips head is shit and get with the beat. My local Asian grocery store has the shittiest brand of Thai tea leaves. I get good ones from Amazon. Local store wants my business? Taste the tea you sell, learn that it is shit, and have better tea on your shelves.
- citizenpaul 6y ago
  You underestimate how many people either like or are fine with shitty tea. My parents still drink folders coffee (yuck). I've never bought Folgers yet look at the store shelf, there are generally 2 or 3 shelves dedicated to only Folgers. We are part of the ultra customized product generation or I think the marketing calls it the "Jeans" generation of shopping. It used to be levi's only. Now even old navy has at least a dozen various on cut let alone style. Philips sucks but what sucks worse is mixing screw types in an already built product/house. People still need them.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Well, times are changing, an increasing number of people are NOT okay with shitty tea, people are discovering better things online, which is why they are losing business to online sellers like Amazon.
    - pixl97 6y ago
      And how is the store supposed to carry 50 different brands of tea catered to the 5 bags that you buy once a month? They are losing business because there is no route to competition on a local level.
      - dheera 6y ago
        They don't need to carry 50 different brands, they just need to carry a selection of a few good things. Just get rid of all the shit brands. Trader Joe's has an excellent model that keeps me going there. A huge amount of their stuff is decent and interesting. Although I can't vouch for their tea they have plenty of stuff that is original and well-priced that you can't find online easily.
gist 6y ago
No doubt many of the merchants and businesses that are being put out of business and/or complaining about amazon are in fact buying from them for the same reasons others are.
baby 6y ago
This simply doesn't scale. We have this happening to an extreme in the US because cities are spread out and people are already used to drive to get what they want (so roads are well-built for deliveries), but the more density you get the less this becomes practical (O(n^2)). Large cities everywhere else in the world perform distributions not point-to-point but point-to-hubs, where people are used to go out for a short walk to get what they want from their local grocery store, electronic store, restaurant, etc. I think we'll see more and more deliveries being made for semi-large items though. Looking at my history, I made an average of 60 orders per year through Amazon while living in the US, an average of 4 orders while living in the UK, and an average of 5 orders while living in France.
brabel 6y ago
Do you really need to buy things online 2-3x a day? With the planet getting heated like an oven, the least you could do would be to purchase things in bulk, so the transportation cost (to the environment not just to your pocket) is a little smaller.
throwaway201103 6y ago
I have decreased my online shopping. I am supporting local retailers who are having a tough time right now.
robryan 6y ago
In Australia with COVID mostly eliminated we are still seeing numbers that would indicate a step change in the portion of retail happening online. The slow move towards online seems to have been accelerated by a few years.
grawprog 6y ago
I haven't ordered anything online all year. I'd rather support the local retailers in my town that have been suffering and on the brink of shutting down all year.
nixpulvis 6y ago
I live in Massachusetts and I have been boycotting Amazon for over a year now. Fact is, I just don't need to buy that much shit. I can go to microcenter for needed electronics, and otherwise grocery / hardware stores have what I need.
jliptzin 6y ago
Even before the pandemic I try to buy everything online, either through Amazon or another retailer. I really do not understand how brick and mortar retails stores stay in business. Just today I needed to buy some plumber's putty. I ordered it from my phone on Amazon in about 30 seconds, that's not even enough time to put my shoes on and get in the car if I were to go to the hardware store. Going to the store is such a gigantic waste of time I don't understand why anyone would do it unless they really need an item immediately.
daxfohl 6y ago
Interestingly my Amazon purchases have gone down. I'm down to 25 this year, from 116 in 2016. I can't really explain it beyond I got tired of (and maybe a little guilty for) buying so much junk online.

walkingolof 6y ago

2-3 times per day? Until transports are carbon neutral, free shipping should be made illegal....

rat9988 6y ago
Using cars too I'd guess then?
- walkingolof 6y ago
  Cars are not free, one of the biggest household budget posts.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    what's a budget post? I don't think I've ever heard that term before.
- Agreed99 6y ago
  Sure, why not It is nothing more than an entitled demand of a minority of the species that can afford them Why should that be justification enough to destroy the planet for the entire species?
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Amazon is probably batching a lot of these orders into one delivery.
- RobinL 6y ago
  I'm really curious about this. I've noticed though time Amazon seem to be batching orders less often (This is in the UK, and merely anecdotal.) I was recently looking at the courier's parcel tracking app, i was interested recently to see that my delivery was '120 stops away'. If this is typical, the marginal cost of delivering a parcel must be small in terms of miles driven and driver time. (Obviously this is highly contingent on population density). Another good example of this is Royal Mail, where the cost of a marginal piece of post or small parcel must be tiny (since the postman is already delivering to 50%+ addresses every day). It occurred to me that in some situations, it might actually be more efficient _not_ to batch. The complexity of attempting to batch at the warehouse must be very high, and take up quite a bit of warehouse space, and slow down dispatch significantly. A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. This seems to suggest that the volume of parcels means that we're already in a situation where couriers are pretty efficient and marginal costs are low. It'd be interesting to know empirically how this works out.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    > A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. I think you are onto something, that the courier business enjoys huge advantage from economies of scale. However, I think that there is no actual monopoly, because the advantage of higher volume in last-mile delivery probably saturates fast enough that you can take it all at relatively low total levels of volume. For example, if you have higher volumes, you can optimize courier routes so that they waste less time driving around. However, at some point fixed per-package overhead like parking getting in and out of the truck, walking up to front door, etc become so large that time spent actually moving between deliveries becomes smaller and smaller part of your time, and so optimizing it becomes less and less valuable. Then, the issue is how much volume you need to hit that level, and I think that the answer is "much less than monopoly level".
ericmay 6y ago
It's not like Amazon (or others) dispatch one truck with one item per order. They will batch these to save cost, and I have to imagine it's more carbon friendly than having an individual car from every household making trips, parking in parking lots, etc. etc.
- untog 6y ago
  I’m consistently surprised by how bad Amazon is at this. Admittedly this might be because I’m in NYC and there are multiple distribution centers but even when I specifically choose to have things bundled up and delivered at once on my “Prime Day” (or whatever they call it) they still deliver separately on different days. Not the end of the world but it does annoy me. I’ve been doing a bunch of shopping at Target since the pandemic too, to balance out reliance on Amazon. They’re much better at delivering items together on the day they originally state.
  - mynameishere 6y ago
    Try ordering online from Walmart. You might order five items and get four packages in four days. Amazon used to be like this 15+ years ago.
siliconmountain 6y ago
A delivery to ten houses from one delivery truck is less carbon than ten household cars driving to the store (10 roundtrips). Or more likely, 2-3 different stores per each household. What you propose would reverse that and increase carbon. Its also worth pointing out theyre moving to electric delivery vans
- EdwinLarkin 6y ago
  But it's also an example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- tgv 6y ago
  That would entirely depend on the distance to the store, and the assumption you'd always use a car.
  - moooo99 6y ago
    > the assumption you'd always use a car. which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone - living in a rural area - living only close to a city but not within - city parts with poor public transport connections Also, the kind of product also heavily influences that. For more specialized products, people tend to be willing to drive longer distances, therefore making the carbon emissions worse. If the store doesn't carry the item but has to order it first, it also means you double the round trips. Overall, Amazon certainly has a massive environmental impact, including GHG emissions, but in terms of emissions, everyone going to the store by themselves wouldn't really be a better option I imagine.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      > which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone Absolutely not. There's plenty of people who live without needing cars.
      - pdpi 6y ago
        The gp itemised which sorts of people they were talking about
cm2012 6y ago
It's way more carbon efficient than driving to three different stores in a day yourself.
- joijoiwejrr 6y ago
  But far less carbon-efficient than just not buying so much unnecessary crap in the first place.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    Moralizing hasn't solved the obesity crisis, so I don't think it will solve the climate crisis either.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Good point, let's also make driving yourself to the store illegal unless you hit a minimum item count while there. Companies already have a natural incentive to batch orders, because doing so reduces their costs. I don't think you need to lean on them to do what they already want to do.
- zaroth 6y ago
  I have a better idea. Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment, and then people can do it as much as they damn well please.
  - moooo99 6y ago
    Considering the overall environmental impact of any personal vehicle on the street, regardless of power source, that seems like a close to impossible task. Public transit seems like a promising solution, but only goes so far. With the strong automotive industry here in Germany, there is no incentive to get cars off the streets.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment. Impossible. Even if the car is powered by renewable electricity, each trip to the store contributes to wear and tear on the vehicle, and the parts on the vehicle were almost certainly not produced with renewable energy but with polluting sources, and plus the industrial process producing them likely produces some toxic waste.
    - repsilat 6y ago
      They meant by pricing the externalities. An emissions trading scheme can mean that carbon-emitting activities just displace each other. A carbon tax can mean that carbon-emitting activities can result in net reductions in emissions. Road user charges, taxes on vehicles bought, you get the picture.
mgraupner 6y ago
I wish Amazon would offer some "green" packaging for items not needed immediately. Pool them and then send them out together, not in 5 different packages by 3 delivery companies.
- lyngford 6y ago
  They do offer that in the Amazon Day program - "Order throughout the week and select FREE Amazon Day Delivery to get all your items in fewer boxes on a single day"
  - mgraupner 6y ago
    Cool, may I ask in which country you live? Unfortunately it's not (yet) available here in Germany.
    - maskedinvader 6y ago
      This seems to be available only in US unfortunately. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-choose-a-weekly-delivery-date-with-launch-of-amazon-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-c...
  - lkbm 6y ago
    I ordered some Christmas presents to be delivered to my parents' house yesterday and was amused to see that I could choose to have them delivered on my Amazon Day. Seems like Amazon Day should be tied to an address, not an account, but I guess it's an edge-case not worth addressing.
- badwolf 6y ago
  In addition to the other commenter's "Amazon Day Delivery" option, I often also have another option of "No rush delivery" which usually includes $1-$5 credit for digital items (ebooks, music, movies...) - https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3 https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3
- i_love_music 6y ago
anonuser123456 6y ago
Or... we could just tax carbon.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  This is what everyone thinks is the only solution, the issue is that it will have different winners and losers than today. And some of the current winners that will be losers have immense political capital and are willing to spend it.
  - NumberWangMan 6y ago
    I don't think it's the only solution, but it's pretty much a necessary part of any comprehensive plan of attack. It's the best tool we have. You're totally right that some current "winners" who benefit from the current state of affairs are fighting and will continue to fight it. That's the case of any major change worth making, though, I think.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    So we just pay the losers a fee to go away. If that means giving Exxon, BP, Shell ... a trillion dollars to just cap all their wells and F'off.... fine. Amortize it over 100 years and pay it down with the tax revenue from carbon.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Fine. As long as we also charge them damages for lying to the public about climate change for all these years.
      - anonuser123456 6y ago
        Consumers willingly purchase and burn hydrocarbons. Joe average consumer is as culpable as some C-suite executive. And the only viable alternative until very recently... nuclear... is endlessly disparaged as unsafe by 'save the earth' types. So as far as I'm concerned, the green movement is equally culpable on the lying front. Should we charge the Sierra Club luddites too?
LockAndLol 6y ago
And once again the responses are about personal rights and freedoms while ignoring the good of society and the planet. This is exactly why developing countries tell first-world countries to shove their lofty and hypocritical demands for others to reduce their carbon footprint. If first-world countries and their citizens can't be bothered to reduce their consumption and behavior, why should developing nations? Especially the comments about "batching orders" somehow having an impact is just ludicrous. Aren't we in a thread about a company forced to hire more people because of the amount of orders coming in, forcing more deliveries? How does it not click in your brains that more orders = more boxes = more resource consumption = more drives = more weight = more fuel consumption = more carbon?
sib 6y ago
They do a lot of work to combine multiple orders placed within short windows (motivated by cost savings, rather than carbon savings, but the effect is the same)...

petra 6y ago

~450,000 employees over 300M people, equals about 37 employees over 25K people. Plus 500K delivery drivers , it's another 37 employees. So 74 employees. How many did work retail in that 25K town ?

lagadu 6y ago
450k employees globally, not just in the US.
foota 6y ago
In fairness, not all the employees in a town work for one company, and Amazon isn't all there is now in that hypothetical town.
- javajosh 6y ago
  The point is that the retail service industry was a big source of "bullshit jobs" that America needs to a) keep wealth distribution reasonable^, and b) keep people believing that success is all about hard work and gumption&. ^ There are differing opinions on what is "reasonable". & It sometimes is, but is usually about circumstance.
- karatinversion 6y ago
  javajosh, you seem to have a very strange model of the motives of managers in retail, a famously low-margin business.
mgraupner 6y ago
I guess this is added global workforce, not US.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  I'd imagine the vast majority of that was in the US, since while Amazon operates in many countries, in most it's only a pale shadow of the US juggernaut. For example, in Singapore it's nearly useless for anything except books, and even there local inventory is pretty sad.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

There should be less jobs in the switch; that's how automation is supposed to work, after all, increasing efficiency and whatnot. The bigger question is whether the total number of jobs in the economy will stay high enough to not have permanent mass unemployment. My guess is, "yes it will, for now at least".

jillesvangurp 6y ago
Most of these jobs are long term indeed going to be automated away. Order picking in a warehouse is still difficult enough that it involves some people but it's not hard to see how that could be reduced over time. Driving delivery vans is also an obvious candidate for getting automated away. However, short term this is just Amazon responding to increased demand because of Corona. Mass unemployment would get accompanied by mass loss of disposable income, so that would actually be bad for Amazon. Automating the supply kind of automates away some of the demand. The notion of bullshit jobs is basically about people doing busy work without actually doing or producing anything of real value. The industrial revolution produced a lot of that already. There's going to be more of it. Easy to predict, because there already is a lot of it. IMHO the lockdown kind of revealed just how pointless some of our jobs really are. Masses of people suddenly worked from home and it did not really disrupt a lot of the supply chains or economy. Instead of being useless in some cubicle, people now got to be useless at home. Technically that should have been a huge productivity hit; except a lot of these people were never really that productive to begin with. The most important thing these people do in our economy is spending.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  > Technically that should have been a huge productivity hit ....unless of course most of those jobs can be done effectively remotely. If we'd instead had all the people now WFH not work at all the economy would look a bit different today, even if you'd kept sending them paychecks.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  > Mass unemployment would get accompanied by mass loss of disposable income, so that would actually be bad for Amazon This is nonsense. You’re saying Amazon should keep paying wages so people can use those wages to shop at Amazon. When put that way you can see it makes no sense. The only thing that matters is that as we increase productivity the benefits are relatively evenly shared. If a 4 or 3 day week becomes normal for everyone and we still output the same or even more, that’s great.

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qz2 6y ago

Yep. This is a massive shift. My amazon order stats are: 2020 - 235 2019 - 107 2018 - 91 2017 - 112 2016 - 34 2015 - 39 2014 - 53 Note the two step jumps. I broke my arm at the start of 2017 for ref. Edit: also to note I've had two (yes just two) issues with Amazon in that time and they just sent new items the next day without argument. Retail has been a shit show on that front for years. I remember standing in Argos arguing with the manager because the DVD player I bought had broken with one of my DVDs inside it and he wouldn't replace it until I'd got it out and I couldn't get it out because the thing had no release hole.

gogopuppygogo 6y ago
I have hated most in store retail experiences my entire life. The staff are low paid and hate their jobs. They are forced to create uncomfortable interactions with shoppers. The big box stores like Macy’s are often dirty and smell bad. Aside from trying on clothes, I don’t know why anyone would shop in a store.
- tehlike 6y ago
  Now that low paid workers are away from eye sight
indymike 6y ago
The's a lot driving this change. Shipping costs, shipping speed, selection, membership and retail's refusal to adapt to change. Ecommerce, and not just Amazon, has in many ways become a better experience. Will be interesting to see how retail adapts because at the core, selling something for more than you paid for it is really what business is.
ptr 6y ago
That's a lot of orders. It seems like many people are buying a lot of things and I'm just gobsmacked that you can come up with so many things to buy! I mean, I order groceries once a week online, but what are the _things_ that people buy? I buy things maybe three times a year in total (excluding things that are necessary for the household, like glue and leather oil).

wolco2 6y ago

I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. I find their delivery times dropping.. Last order, I ordered and paided more for same day rush.. that came by the end of the next day instead. They gave a $10 coupon but I literally picked the product based on it arriving that day and would have made a different purchasing choose if I knew it was coming tomorrow.

moooo99 6y ago
Had the same experience here. Same day shipping has very limited availability here in Germany with a fairly limited inventory, most items are next day shipping. I ordered a product at 3AM with a huge text claiming "same day delivery when ordering within the next 5h". The order arrived at 8PM the next day, which was relatively annoying considering the same day arrival heavily influenced my purchasing decision.
greggturkington 6y ago
The majority of my "next-day" and "2-day" orders have been late (often cancelled) for months.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Well, Amazon did say this would occur for non necessity items months ago because of the huge demand strain put on their system, which is exactly what this article is about.
  - greggturkington 6y ago
    Who cares? It's a competitive advantage they no longer have and less value for my expensive Prime subscription
crazygringo 6y ago
> Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore. If you ignore shipping, maybe sometimes. But I still find that 99% of the time, for items on Amazon.com that are sold by Amazon.com, it's cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping, while most others site charge $7-10 shipping or have a minimum of $75-100 for free shipping. And even if you don't have Prime, the minimum for free shipping is just $25, and you can pretty much always add in stuff that you need to buy soon anyways (shampoo, paper towels, whatever). And delivery times usually has zero to do with Amazon, obviously, they're best in class. With the pandemic and all, UPS and USPS are obviously straining in general. It's not like Wal-Mart, Kohl's, or any other online stores are any better. Despite their advertising, everyone knows you shouldn't be expecting UPS/USPS packages to be reliably arriving on time since March.

xoxoy 6y ago

I’ve honestly found online shopping to become increasingly anti-consumer. The absolute worst trend is what I would consider to be aggressive dynamic pricing, especially on Amazon.

ArtDev 6y ago
Where specific items cost double on Amazon? Yeah, its better to shop around. For me, Amazon has become very slow since the pandemic. I only shop on Amazon when I can't find it elsewhere
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pixl97 6y ago
I don't think you've been in stores much then. The entire experience is designed to be anti consumer and to trigger impulse purchases as much as possible. Some would say this is the impact of late stage capitalism. There is no money left to be made on conventional purchases, but instead the profit is in trickery or deception.
alacombe 6y ago
That's actually perfect, as you can game the system for non-immediate items.

blargmaster42_8 6y ago

This is part of the plan... destroy independent retailers and centralise control

SmokeyHamster 6y ago

Yeah, I'm really surprised by how dependent I've become on Amazon, a company I don't even really trust. The convenience can't be understated, especially as it's not really apparent until you start buying a lot from a site like Amazon. I didn't realize I hate shopping in a physical store until I started using Amazon. You spend 99% of your time either wandering through aisles trying to find what you want (which they usually don't have) or waiting in the checkout line. Neither of those things apply to online shopping. The biggest hassle when shopping online is having to login and navigate to dozens, if not hundreds of different websites, re-entering your personal info each time. But a site like Amazon is the Internet equivalent of a department store that has everything, so you only have to login once. Even if Amazon's prices are the same as physical stores, or even a little more, the time I save not having to drive in traffic and waste walking around a store or standing in lines still makes it worthwhile.

burnthrow 6y ago
You never even have to leave your chair, it's the future.

seanwilson 6y ago

> Before the pandemic, my household purchased items online for delivery perhaps 1x per week. Now, it's 2-3x per day. Clothing, LPs, pearl milk tea, ... What are you ordering per day? I'm happy knowing that I can survive not leaving the house if I need to by doing a single bulk online food shop once every two or three weeks. Then I might need the odd delivery for broken light bulbs and things I couldn't foresee. I also don't need a car at all as there's enough shops in walking distance and decent public transport. I second the concerns about the carbon footprint of frequent orders. At the very least, people should try to do bulk orders and avoid buying stuff they don't need. Driving around 3 times a day to buy stuff shouldn't be the norm either.

zests 6y ago
How many trips to the store do these deliveries save? If I order something small it likely hitches a ride with my neighbors delivery and the delivery of the package itself will have negligible carbon footprint.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  How much extra packaging are you introducing with many small orders vs bulk orders? Food shops in the UK can deliver without any bags at all for example. A single bottle of something from Amazon for instance will likely come in a cardboard box with some kind of plastic bubble wrap. And is it really true that the driver is going to have items to delivery to almost every block of houses every day? Not everyone is shopping from the same retailer either.
  - ChickeNES 6y ago
    > And is it really true that the driver is going to have items to delivery to almost every block of houses every day? Not everyone is shopping from the same retailer either. My apartment literally has Amazon drivers coming twice a day with a cart full of packages
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Pandemic-style living with wife & 2 adult, self-sufficient daughters. All 3 of them working from home and shopping for entertainment & to battle boredom. Those items above are examples of what actually shows up at the front door. Groceries as well, either from Costco (usually a large order) or Whole Foods (for stuff they can't get at Costco). Sometimes baking HW (a new hobby for one of them). Sometimes, it's boyfriends that drop off Trader Joe's or In-n-Out... None of us have set foot in a store since March.

tpmx 6y ago

Sweden (in the countryside): Local smallish grocery stores have expanded their order-online-and-pickup-outside offerings massively. Also a lot of hiring of low skilled labor to do the picking. One of the nearby grocery stores I shop at even rented a chiller container as overflow for pickup storage over the spring/summer/autumn. Edit: The reason these small stores have been able to do so: They are franchise stores in a chain a with a big enough national presence that's able to do software development. Or just owned outright by a large central outfit. They have some kind of centralized inventory management.

dheera 6y ago

> satisfactory No just satisfactory, but retail stores also need to learn that if they want my business they need to have interesting, quality products. My local hardware store only has Philips drywall screws. Guess what, Philips heads are shit, that's why I'll even wait 2 days to get Torx head screws from Amazon. Hardware store wants my business? Learn that Philips head is shit and get with the beat. My local Asian grocery store has the shittiest brand of Thai tea leaves. I get good ones from Amazon. Local store wants my business? Taste the tea you sell, learn that it is shit, and have better tea on your shelves.

citizenpaul 6y ago
You underestimate how many people either like or are fine with shitty tea. My parents still drink folders coffee (yuck). I've never bought Folgers yet look at the store shelf, there are generally 2 or 3 shelves dedicated to only Folgers. We are part of the ultra customized product generation or I think the marketing calls it the "Jeans" generation of shopping. It used to be levi's only. Now even old navy has at least a dozen various on cut let alone style. Philips sucks but what sucks worse is mixing screw types in an already built product/house. People still need them.
- dheera 6y ago
  Well, times are changing, an increasing number of people are NOT okay with shitty tea, people are discovering better things online, which is why they are losing business to online sellers like Amazon.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    And how is the store supposed to carry 50 different brands of tea catered to the 5 bags that you buy once a month? They are losing business because there is no route to competition on a local level.
    - dheera 6y ago
      They don't need to carry 50 different brands, they just need to carry a selection of a few good things. Just get rid of all the shit brands. Trader Joe's has an excellent model that keeps me going there. A huge amount of their stuff is decent and interesting. Although I can't vouch for their tea they have plenty of stuff that is original and well-priced that you can't find online easily.

gist 6y ago

No doubt many of the merchants and businesses that are being put out of business and/or complaining about amazon are in fact buying from them for the same reasons others are.

baby 6y ago

This simply doesn't scale. We have this happening to an extreme in the US because cities are spread out and people are already used to drive to get what they want (so roads are well-built for deliveries), but the more density you get the less this becomes practical (O(n^2)). Large cities everywhere else in the world perform distributions not point-to-point but point-to-hubs, where people are used to go out for a short walk to get what they want from their local grocery store, electronic store, restaurant, etc. I think we'll see more and more deliveries being made for semi-large items though. Looking at my history, I made an average of 60 orders per year through Amazon while living in the US, an average of 4 orders while living in the UK, and an average of 5 orders while living in France.

brabel 6y ago

Do you really need to buy things online 2-3x a day? With the planet getting heated like an oven, the least you could do would be to purchase things in bulk, so the transportation cost (to the environment not just to your pocket) is a little smaller.

throwaway201103 6y ago

I have decreased my online shopping. I am supporting local retailers who are having a tough time right now.

robryan 6y ago

In Australia with COVID mostly eliminated we are still seeing numbers that would indicate a step change in the portion of retail happening online. The slow move towards online seems to have been accelerated by a few years.

grawprog 6y ago

I haven't ordered anything online all year. I'd rather support the local retailers in my town that have been suffering and on the brink of shutting down all year.

nixpulvis 6y ago

I live in Massachusetts and I have been boycotting Amazon for over a year now. Fact is, I just don't need to buy that much shit. I can go to microcenter for needed electronics, and otherwise grocery / hardware stores have what I need.

jliptzin 6y ago

Even before the pandemic I try to buy everything online, either through Amazon or another retailer. I really do not understand how brick and mortar retails stores stay in business. Just today I needed to buy some plumber's putty. I ordered it from my phone on Amazon in about 30 seconds, that's not even enough time to put my shoes on and get in the car if I were to go to the hardware store. Going to the store is such a gigantic waste of time I don't understand why anyone would do it unless they really need an item immediately.

daxfohl 6y ago

Interestingly my Amazon purchases have gone down. I'm down to 25 this year, from 116 in 2016. I can't really explain it beyond I got tired of (and maybe a little guilty for) buying so much junk online.