Amazon Free Samples: Targeted Sampling Comes!

With the filtering of Amazon’s new free samples project, it looks like the war has only just begun.

According to the Axios portal, Amazon is working on a free sampling program taking advantage of the potential of big data and AI.

Although there is no official confirmation from the marketplace, there are indications of this among other reasons because some of the Amazon users in the United States would be receiving free samples without having requested it.

With this strategy based on sampling, Amazon would be using the sending of samples under the premise of targeted advertisements, that is, foreseeing – thanks to the purchase history and other navigation data of its customers – what type of products could be of interest to them.

If confirmed, we could speak of Amazon’s master play, in a context of bloody struggle to get the bulk of online sales quota.

Amazon and Google

There is an open war between Amazon and Google in the market of virtual assistants, since the era of voice and voice commerce -one of the most important trends in electronic commerce- will inevitably mark the development and positioning of technological giants.

For example, Google has just launched Google Express in the United States, a platform that centralizes the buying and selling of products and that is necessary to be able to compete with Amazon in the race of smart speakers.

This decision is probably motivated by the need to live up to Echo’s main advantage: voice purchases directly and easily, without intermediaries.

But not only that: the data is also a gold mine, real consumer data that Amazon has been collecting for almost two decades in its work of intermediation of sales or direct sales of its products.

And those are the data that Google has been missing, given that its “Shopping” model only works as a search engine.

In that sense, all the advantage of the sampling model would be for Amazon, since other big ones like Facebook would be left out because they don’t have, either, the necessary logistic infrastructure to make it a reality.

For Amazon, it’s simple: it just has to take advantage of the shipment of some of the products that a client has bought to include a sample in the same package, being able to send the free samples without any cost.

Amazon Free Samples as a New Advertising Model

On the other hand, this strategy would bring more revenue to the retail giant: in Amazon’s free sample program advertisers would pay for this sample delivery “service” as they now pay for visual ads.

Sellers and brands would also gain an advantage, as Amazon’s free samples would be made available to those consumers known to have a high probability of consuming. Thanks to the valuable data the marketplace has on its customers, coming not only from the search or purchase history, but also from the Shopping Cart or Wish List.

This Amazon free sample program would be an advertising model that would allow them to compete with other giants of this category, but at another level, in the field of direct marketing.

It is simply brilliant, because in this way Amazon would add the income obtained by this way to those that it already receives by advertising, assuring, in addition, a greater probability of conversion than through visual advertising.

In addition, thanks to this, it would gain quota in terms of buying and selling packaged products, where it is not strong.

Amazon’s free samples would be much more effective than Facebook or Google ads for this type of consumables.

In addition, there is speculation that Amazon sellers would have the ability to automate campaigns, thanks to a technology that developers would already be working on.

Free samples of Amazon and its Impact on Privacy

In light of this fact, speculation arises regarding the issue of privacy, as there is no shortage of those who see an impediment in the zeal with which many consumers preserve their data.

First of all, it should be noted that users of the platform have the possibility to indicate that they do not wish to receive free samples from Amazon, because, although consent to receive samples is a default when creating an account, it is possible to revoke it in the configuration section.

However, my opinion is that the issue of privacy will have a low incidence: customers already give up their data when they make the purchase and, in addition, are increasingly aware that they are used for the guidance of ads or ranking SERP.

In the case of Amazon’s free samples, the only thing that changes is that the user receives a free product. It may surprise at first to receive something that has not been bought, but it is possible to think that this human being will soon get used to the gifts.

After all, no one is bitter about a candy. Right?

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Larry O'Connell