Sellers of Amazon have until January 13, 2020, to make modifications to Advertising Promotions in offering free shipping promos in their advertisements, which they used to entice shoppers to buy more products, according to an online article posted on ecommercebytes.com, "to reach a free-shipping threshold."
In the same article, it was indicated that several sellers aired their disappointment over the decision of Amazon. One seller even said this was a great strategy to encourage consumers to buy more products, benefiting both Amazon and its sellers. Another seller expressed his point saying, the decision benefits the shoppers, too. In contrast, others asked Amazon to provide a rationale it created for the new and updated policy, which excludes them from providing free-shipping promos in their ads.
Amazon's 'Free Shipping Promo Deprecation'
Effective January 13, 2020, Free Shipping Deprecation will no longer be backed. Thus, Amazon is asking its sellers to make any necessary corrections to their Free Shipping Promotions in the online selling platform's Advertising Promotions before the said date. Meaning, on January 13 of the coming year, all "Pending and Active Free Shipping Promotions will get terminated by having their statuses updated automatically to 'Expired,' and the 'Free Shipping' promo type is to be removed from the 'Create a Promotion' page found in Seller Central. For sellers opting to offer free shipping for their customers, you can still set the promotion up by going to the Shipping settings in the Settings tab.
This "race to zero for shipping speeds" may, in fact, result in more issues than solve, for the online retail selling giant, as well as its peers. However, despite this, the goal of Jeff Bezos, Amazon, is to delight the consumers and build loyalty to the brand, partly through speedier response times. More so, some probable problems, though, are starting to rear their unpleasant heads. For beginners, higher shipping speeds are capable of generating losses for sellers and retailers. As most people know, one-day shipping is inexpensive.
Amazon's Fast Shipping Program
Since 2005, Amazon has been attracting hundreds of millions of consumers to its membership program called Prime, by promising just one thing: fast and free shipping with their ordered products being delivered to their doorsteps within 48 hours or even less. Meanwhile, several warnings have been made to the free two-day shipping program of Amazon. For purchased ordered with small items, customers have been required by Prime to spend a $25 minimum before qualifying for free shipping, and orders generally taking longer than two days to get to the customer.
Towards the start of the 2nd quarter, Amazon said it was working to offer a 1-day shipping promo to Prime customers, and it has also eased off on the requirement of minimum purchase. This then encouraged customers to purchase cheap individual items that come with free 1-day shipping. Reducing delivery time in half, according to Amazon, also promised that the initiative could have a substantial environmental effect.
Incidentally, in September, Bezos announced that Amazon's commitment to battling climate change, with the objective of reducing carbon emissions "to be carbon-neutral" 20 years from now. He said the company would be issuing reports on its emissions on a regular basis and set forth a timeframe for Amazon to be run exclusively on renewables 10 years from now. The company executive added, the company is presently getting "40% of its energy from renewables."
