Jordy Blog

Universal Wishlists: A Lesson in Open Marketing

Universal Wishlist Review

I’m not a big shopper, especially when it comes to traditional brick-and-morter stores, but the internet marketer in me loves new features that make online shopping more pleasant. Such is Amazon’s new Universal Wishlist feature. (OK, it’s not that new, but it’s still awesome.)

I love Amazon’s Universal Wishlist because it allows me to save items from other online stores right to my Amazon wishlist. Being able to store all of the products I want in one place has made Amazon my de facto shopping site for filing away stuff that I want now, but can only afford to buy someday. It’s my new virtual den of covetousness.

Other similar services exist as well. TheThingsIWant also looks kind of cool, and it has basically the same core functionality.  I haven’t tried it, but they supposedly have a feature that allows you to syndicate your wishlist to your blog. Very cool, and surely they’re getting some affiliate commission from that. I’m not sure that I would ever use wishlist syndication, but I can definitely see it being an interesting component of a personal or family blog.

It occurred to me that Google Product Search must have some similar feature, and sure enough, they do. Google shopping list lets you save products you want and compare prices across tons of online stores. It also lets you save notes and publish products in either a public or private list. Very cool. The biggest feature that it’s missing (for me, anyway) is the ability to make your own wishlist submissions for items from smaller stores (like the Mises.org store) that don’t show up on Google’s radar. Too bad. Still, it’s great if you only buy from big retailers.

Anyway, if you’re online shopping experience has been bound to one retailer, I now pronounce it unbound.

Lessons in Open Marketing

But, you might be asking yourself: “Why would Amazon extend it’s functionality to to other sites? Isn’t that giving away some of its secret sauce, let alone revenue?”

Answers:

1. Amazon uses the Universal Wishlists to make the “long tail” even longer, meaning it allows for even more product to be saved on it’s site. This is not necessarily to their direct benefit (since they don’t get the direct sale) but it does help build a shopping community around their site, and that’s as good as gold.
2. I’m sure Amazon also gets a bit of a traffic boost from this. When else would I ever go from Mises.org directly to Amazon? Having a “Click to add” to my Amazon wishlist right in my browser makes Amazon one click away from any retailer on the net. Now that’s smart. (This is somewhat analogous to building a brick-and-morter store in the mall. Why build right next to your competition? Because you can both benefit from the increased traffic that being in the the place for shopping will bring. If it’s sybmiotic, it works for everyone.)
3. Another win for Amazon: data mining. Suddenly Amazon knows what products I’m “eyeing” from other sites, often their direct competition. That’s great data to have when for making pricing, merchandising, and marketing decisions. That kind of competitive data is priceless, especially to an online store that process and act on that data quickly. Interested in a lawnchair from so-and-so? well here are our lawnchairs. X customer added Y watch from Z store? Why don’t we sell Y watch? You get the picture.

Overall I think implementing the Universal Wishlist a great, although somewhat unintuitive, strategic move for Amazon. It’s gutsy to encourage and facilitate increasing sales for other retailers; but it also builds community, increases site traffic, and provides meaningful (and actionable) data for competive analysis. Plus it builds goodwill –or at least it did for me. I appreciate being able to use Amazon’s wishlist feature wherever I find good products. That’s just good marketing.

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Netflix Fix and the Long Tail

That’s right. I finally broke down and joined Netflix. Actually, I’d already signed on for 2 free weeks during my last semester of college. Of course, I had to drop it right away because of the student budget. I had a series of massive papers and a presentation examining the online DVD rental company and I wanted some real exposure just to make sure I knew what I was talking about.

I was totally fascinated by the company’s business model, blown away by the way it moves DVDs around the country with very little inventory in-house on any given day. My group spend several pages explaining “Long Tail” economics, only we didn’t call it that because we weren’t subscribed to Wired and didn’t know it had a name. It may sound a little trite, but the concepts we learned will revolutionize business and a lot more. Basically Netflix is able to blow Blockbuster out of the water by serving hundreds of very small niches that are very important in the aggregate. Blockbuster (in it’s brick-and-mortar stores) simply can’t supply small niches because a low-demand movie can’t pay the rent on its shelf-space.

And that’s why I’m switching. Netflix has so much more selection than your local brick-and-mortar rental store, and the experience is way better. Instead of looking through the same crappy “hits” at Blockbuster, I go online to Netflix and rate the movies I’ve seen. The Netflix recommendation engine then leads me to other movies. If you Liked “Amadeus” you’ll probably like “Ghandi”. If you liked “Ghandi”, you’ll probably like “Hotel Rwanda”, “Rabbit-Proof Fence”, “Waking Ned Devine”, “The Dish”, “October Sky”, etc.

But there’s so much more. Documentaries. TV shows. Music DVDs from Jethro Tull to Thelonious Monk. RSS feeds make it easy to browse new releases, and I can opt to have R-rated movies not displayed. Can I just tell you how much time that saves? I’m not going to become a movie nut, because I do believe there is such thing as too much entertainment, but for the little time that I have to spend on entertainment, this is just so much better.

All in all, Reed Hastings is a genius. Netflix continues to grow, while Blockbuster (despite it’s copycat online ventures) hasn’t turned a profit in years. Long Tail Economics will change American culture as taste are allowed to become less homogenized. Independent filmmakers and publishers will be able to find an audience without having to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The internet will further this phenomenon as content that was unavailable due to the prohibitive economics of physical distribution channels can be accessed by anyone anytime. These dynamics already affect everything from CD sales, to software, to journalism; and I believe this is only the beginning. Long live the Long Tail!