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Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Cheap Prime, On-Campus Kiosks Meant To Get College Students Hooked On Amazon
Consumerist: How do you get newly minted adults hooked on your service for life? If you’re Amazon, the secret is to provide them with everything that they need at a discount, and deliver it as quickly as possible. The combination of discounted Prime service and easy on-campus pickup is meant to hook college students on Prime during their formative years, and it’s turning out to be very effective.
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11 comments:
As an avid user of amazon its interesting to think that i may be "hooked" on their services. while this is true i would certainly jump to another company if they provided a better service. i feel that amazon overall offers a great service to people , not just students its because of that that i think people choose to keep with them. because there arent much better options out there.
First off, I would say that Amazon Prime is one of the greatest the greatest things since sliced bread. They have thousands of items that will show up at your door with two to three days with free shipping is purely magically. While I was living on campus freshman year I used this a ton! In fact, basically all of my Susan Tsu supplies were purchased this way. I do not that kiosks are necessarily not a bad idea, but I do not think it is the best idea. I would say that a good portion of students (I would guess about eighty percent) already have and use amazon prime on a regular basis. It just sees that these kiosks are really unnecessary. Maybe it is just me, but I only use Amazon on my computer, so why am I going to search for the perfect item in the UC while a line is forming behind me to also get a perfect item.
Amazon's presence on college campuses is unmistakable. In modern academia, college students find amazon to be an absolute necessity, partially due to the number of purchases that are project based, or due to the book market that exists on Amazon. It's much easier for a student to log on from their computer than to walk to the campus bookstore (particularly for students that don't live on campus in the first place) just to find out that the store doesn't have the book your professor is requiring, or if they do that it's completely overpriced in comparison to the prices advertised online. Not to mention that for textbooks you can often buy used on Amazon, and also have the option to even sell back your used book. They often buy back textbooks at the end of the semester for upwards of 80% of what you originally sold it to them for, which softens the blow of incredibly expensive textbooks on the fragile wallets of college students. It only makes sense that they would want to expand their presence on campuses even further, because I'm sure that college students make up a significant percentage of their customer base considering the developments of the company in the past 5 years.
I think it is kind of funny that they are doing this with the goal of getting college students hooked on Amazon, when college students are already very hooked on Amazon. I understand the idea of having the Amazon center to help the campus mail service, but I just think it is kind of a waste of Amazon's time because it would not really advertise for them. It would be hard to find a college student that has never at least heard of Amazon, so seeing the name there would not do a ton for them. Additionally, it seems like college campuses would not want these. If they are encouraging students to buy more from Amazon, then the book store makes much less in both book sales and school supply sales. They make some money from Amazon renting the space on campus, and it saves the package place some trouble, but I do not see how worth it this is for either party. However, if this were a 24-hour kiosk (which it might be? I did not see anything about it but who knows), that would be a game changer. I would 100% be in favor of this then. Today, I could not pick up my new multi-colored Camelbak spouts that I ordered off Amazon because Obama felt the need to shut down the UC. If we had a 24 hour Amazon kiosk, I could have picked them up when they arrived on Wednesday night and not spent all of today being angry at Obama.
I think this Amazon university pick up is a really good idea. As a college student I get basically everything except groceries on Amazon. It is very convenient to order online and then get it in 2 days if you have prime. I imagine that most of the packages that go to the university mailroom are from Amazon anyway so it makes sense for them to open up a separate pick up spot where they do not have to bother the university mailroom. It may be more popular than the bookstore because the bookstore is usually more expensive than any other stores. This Amazon pick up would not necessarily affect me since I live off campus and get all my mail to my apartment, but it will be very helpful to the people that do live on campus. Mailrooms might also not like it because they will not have a lot of packages coming in because Amazon is taking over their job.
I was excited for an Amazon store but that is not what this is. This little “shop” is really just an amazon specific mail room. Instead of getting something shipped to your campus address, you can get it shipped to this “kiosk.” Now that’s not really what this article was about, I found that info on a different article on consumerist.com, but this article is about a pretty ingenious and unoriginal marketing plan. Give college students great discounts that are really affordable and get them hooked. That way when they no longer have access to the discounts they still want the service and will pay full price. I think I might go to grad school after college so I can keep my low cost accounts with spotify, amazon, PNC, autocad, Netflix, etc. (full disclosure, my parents pay for a family Netflix account so I guess I can leave school but just not start a new family to keep that one).
Yeah, like many other people commenting here amazon doesn’t need to do anything more to get me hooked on prime. That being said I don’t really think that’s amazon’s only goal here. I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if amazon is the largest single shipping company in the United States, and that shipping doesn’t come cheaply. I would not be in the slightest surprised if this was the beginning of a way to develop an amazon based distribution system right up to our front doors. Universities are convenient hubs for starting the basic infrastructure of a new distribution system simply based on their mass concentration of prime subscribers. In addition, if Amazon is able to deliver themselves and do 1 day or even same day delivery to central locations like this for free. I think a lot of local stores would be in for a shock of competition.
Amazon Prime is a great service, and the fact that it's so reasonably priced for students makes it all the more appealing. There were many times last year where my projects for Susan Tsu would not have been possible without those last minute Amazon Prime orders of art supplies and random objects. Personally I wouldn't use an Amazon pickup location that much, as I live off campus and it's much easier to have things directly shipped to my house. I think that as we already have a place to pickup packages on campus this wouldn't be that necessary at Carnegie Mellon, but it could help to relieve some of the package flow to the UC. My only gripe with Amazon Prime was that I forgot to cancel my free trial before it was over and got charged $50. At this point I'm basically dependent on Amazon Prime though, so I'll probably renew it again for as long as I have the student discount.
Amazon is definitely succeeding in getting college students hooked onto Prime. Last year, I started the student trial, forgot about it, and accidentally bought the full year student subscription. When this happened, I thought “Oh well, I’ll just cancel it next year”. But now, I am probably going to keep it because of all of the perks it offers. I love having free two day shipping, watching free tv shows and movies, and recently, reading some books for free. Having an added kiosk on campus as a quick and easy place to pick up packages would make my attachment to Prime even greater. I have often thought to myself about what I did before I had Prime. How was I able to get everything I could possibly need in 2 days? Whatever the case, Amazon certainly has my loyalty, and I would love to see a pickup kiosk appear on campus.
I would like to thank Amazon for saving my life when I had prime. I did the student free trail for 6 months, and it was wonderful, now however I am too cheap to pay for it monthly. I think that Amazon has the marketing world down to a science, they have everything you could possibly want and now can get it super fast, and with the college life style this is exactly how to get people hooked. I personally stopped subscribing the Amazon Prime after my free trail was over, and every now and then would order something, but over the summer, I forgot my password, and that is how it is going to stay. This stops me from impulse buying way to much because of how easy it is. Every now again if their is something I really need on Amazon I have one of my friends with Prime get it for me, and pay them back. That is the only way I am staying away from getting sucked into the Amazon trap.
I could not function here without amazon prime. It had been a lifesaver for every susan tag project I've completed so far when I need some odd specialty items in a day and I wouldn't even know where to look for them if I went shopping around Pittsburgh. I'm glad that they are giving students trials to get us hooked and I must say that it works very well to foster the addiction. As for the amazon kiosk, I was on a campus last year that had one of these and I found it incredibly useful. It wasn't that close to my house but it was very close to my classes so I could pick something like supplies up right where I needed them or I could run by as I caught my bus home. Here, because of the way my building works, it would also be pretty useful. All my packages go through a doorman that only work regular business hours so I would have to leave during the middle of the day to get my packages. That is the reason I have two week old packages waiting for me down the hall in a locked room I can't get to since I have classes and work during the day. A kiosk, for me, would be incredibly helpful.
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