Amazon wants to anticipate your next purchase
The Wall Street Journal revealed this week that Amazon, recently filed and obtained the patent for what it has called “anticipatory shipping.” The premise of Amazon’s latest venture is to predict what consumers will buy, and where to deliver potential purchases before they have even been bought.
The new service is being developed in an effort to speed up delivery times, and will likely put further pressure on store based retail, due to the even greater convenience Amazon hopes to offer.
Amazon has not disclosed entirely the workings of its new system, and whether it has already been implemented. The ecommerce giant has however suggested it will use a wide variety of customer data to accurately and successfully predict demand—from how long an online-shopper’s cursor has hovered over a product, to previous orders and searched items.
To read more, click here.
The conflict mineral bill—companies around the globe unprepared
The conflict mineral law was put into place and became active in August 2012 to stop the inadvertent funding of violent rebel factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo through the sale of minerals. The legislation stipulates that electronics manufacturers doing business in the US must inform the American government of any conflict minerals in their supply chains. The deadline for preliminary information to be made available is May 2014.
A recent survey conducted by IHS of 162 firms from around the world, has however found that 42% of companies are still uncertain how to go about complying with the new law.
To read more, click here.
Apathetic towards climate change
The Guardian’s Supply Chain hub has brought to light a recently published report which suggests the level of investment major corporations are putting towards the lowering of carbon levels is waning. The findings, from the NGO, CDP and Accenture, show that on the whole, although 72% of companies acknowledge the risk of climate change, due to “regulatory uncertainty” many are reluctant to put more money towards managing their carbon footprint. In fact 70% of sectors admit investment has declined either from 2011, 2012 or both.
Governments are however, not without a role to play in incentivizing corporations to employ more sustainable supply chains and lower emissions. While the US and China are playing their parts to enforce environmental protection legislation, the opposite is in fact true for countries such as Australia, which plans to remove its carbon tax. Japan and Europe similarly appear to have a declining level of interest.
2,868 firms gave information for the report; this represents 14% of 2013’s industrial emissions world-wide.
To read more, click here.