起底亚马逊金牌服务

    2004年12月，亚马逊公司的CEO杰夫•贝佐斯给聚在他老家房后的一幢船屋里的一群员工抛出了一个难题（这幢屋子位于华盛顿湖边，占地有5英亩），让他们想出一种能够扩大并加速免费快递服务的办法，从而提高顾客的忠诚度。

    经过两个月的头脑风暴，亚马逊推出了金牌服务项目Prime——支付79美元年费的客户，可以在全美范围内免费获得不限次数的两天送达服务。

    在推介这个项目时，贝佐斯曾经在网络上写道：“两天送达服务将变成一种日常体验，而不是偶尔的奢侈。”

    推出10年来，亚马逊Prime服务已经不可避免地改变了网购者的预期，反过来也在快递服务领域掀起了一场军备竞赛。另外，Prime也从单一的快递服务发展为包含流媒体娱乐、电子书借阅在内的一系列服务，同时Prime的用户也有机会独家享受越来越多的、冠以亚马逊品牌的商品，比如婴儿湿巾。

    亚马逊表示，目前Prime在美国已经拥有“几千万名会员”，对于这家总是将业务指标视为国家机密的公司，这是一个典型的模糊数字。分析师估计，Prime服务的全球会员应该在4000万到5000万之间。

    不管怎样，Prime已经成为亚马逊招揽顾客的一个重要工具，助推亚马逊成为电商领域的一哥，也让它成为所有零售商的头号威胁。如果说亚马逊最初是靠着极具杀伤力的价格吸引了大批消费者，那么Prime就是那条将他们牢牢套住的绳索。

    然而这个战略也让亚马逊损失了几十亿美元。快递本身就是一项高成本的业务，再将所有这些附加服务计算在内，Prime很快就成了一个永远也填不满的钱坑。

    Prime服务的营销说辞令消费者难以抗拒。不管是天生购物狂，还是需要经常网购衣服、书籍和其他用具的普通家庭，在加入Prime后，他们就可以尽情网购，完全不必担心快递费用的问题。

    反过来，这也让亚马逊赢得了一批忠实的回头客。另外，通过像好市多超市一样收取年费，它也获得了一笔具有可预测性和稳定性的现金流。

    亚马逊Prime服务的副总裁格雷格•格里利表示：“我们想把它做得便于顾客使用——也就是顾客只要一次做出选择，然后整整一年就不必再为快递而费神。”格里列和时任客户服务部高级副总裁杰夫•维尔克、财务总监汤姆•斯库塔克都参加了当年的“船屋会议”。

    在Prime服务推出之前，大多数快递包裹可能要一周以上才能送到。如果想让你的包裹早点送到，就得多花点钱寄联邦快递或UPS，否则只能耐心等候。这意味着很多不愿等太久的顾客最终会放弃网购，转而光顾当地的沃尔玛超市或塔吉特百货。

    那时的亚马逊还并未成长为电商业的巨擎。没错，它的规模当时已经足够庞大，但它仍然面临着实体零售商的巨大竞争压力。亚马逊的高管也非常担心来自于eBay的竞争。虽然eBay的竞拍业务已经开始萎缩，但是从90年代末，也就是亚马逊从书籍进军音乐、电器和玩具等领域时开始，eBay就一直是亚马逊最大的竞争对手。

    推出Prime服务后，亚马逊可谓如虎添翼，它开始急剧扩张，势不可挡。过去10年间，可通过Prime订购的商品从100万种增长到了2000万种。Prime还积极进军国际市场，先是登陆日本、英国和德国，然后又挺进法国、意大利和加拿大。

    2011年，亚马逊又为Prime添加了一项类似于奈飞（Netflix）的视频流媒体服务项目，命名为Instant Video。和这项服务一同推出的，还有5000部电影和电视剧集，当时这个规模只及得上奈飞的一个零头。此举令一些权威人士感到吃惊，认为亚马逊是在走弯路。

    不过亚马逊的格里利认为，快递与视频流媒体服务并不冲突。如果Prime会员喜欢Instant Video提供的内容，他们可能就会按需购买数字电影和电视剧，反过来也有利于维持用户忠诚度，从而进一步促进亚马逊的业绩。

    格里利表示，事情的发展正如同他们所料。从2011年到2014年，Prime的用户订阅数不断飙升，亚马逊认为，这主要归功于流媒体视频服务的吸引力。

    现在，通过与维亚康姆和HBO等发行商合作，Instant Video已经拥有4万多部电影和电视剧。它还有欧洲DVD与流媒体公司LoveFilm提供的片库资源，亚马逊于2008年以近3.17亿美元的价格将其收购。

    为了让Prime Instant Video更有吸引力，亚马逊甚至还开始自制电视剧。2010年年末成立的亚马逊工作室致力于把公众通过亚马逊网站提交的剧本改编成影视剧。通过该渠道，亚马逊工作室已经制作了三部试播剧。其中最成功的是黑色家庭喜剧《透明家庭》，由《发展受阻》的男演员杰弗里•塔伯扮演一位变性父亲。该剧在今年荣获两项金球奖（最佳电视剧和最佳男演员）。

    亚马逊不愿透露有多少Prime会员使用了它的流媒体视频服务。但根据网络设备公司Sandvine发布的一份报告，Prime Instant Video的市场份额还远远赶不上流媒体视频霸主奈飞公司，不过它一直在成长。从2013年3月到2014年9月，它在北美高峰时段（晚7点到11点）的网络流量份额翻倍，从1.27%上涨到了2.6%。这与奈飞相比仍然相形见绌，后者同一时段的网络流量份额达到了三分之一以上。

    索尼音乐前高管、现任亚马逊数字视频业务负责人的迈克尔•波尔也承认：“我认为，我们本来可以行动得更快，制作出更好的电视剧和电影。”

    有鉴于此，亚马逊在2014年向Prime Instant Video投资13亿美元。今年1月，亚马逊声称今年将开拍12部电影，另外亚马逊已经签下了伍迪•艾伦，这位电影界的传奇人物将执导他的第一部电视剧，该剧将于2016年在Prime Instant Video上独家播放。

    In December 2004, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos threw out a challenge to a small group of employees huddled in the boathouse behind his Medina, Wash. home, a sprawling 5-acre estate on the shore of Lake Washington. Find a way to expand and speed up free shipping, he told them, as a way to increase customer loyalty.

    Two months after that brainstorming session, Amazon unveiled Prime. Customers who paid $79 annually would get “free” two-day delivery nationwide for an unlimited number of orders.

    “Two-day shipping becomes an everyday experience rather than an occasional indulgence,” Bezos wrote online in introducing the program.

    Since its launch 10 years ago, Amazon Prime has irrevocably transformed shoppers’ expectations and, in turn, spearheaded an all-out arms race for faster shipping. Meanwhile Prime has evolved far beyond its simple roots into an all-inclusive package of streaming entertainment, e-book lending and exclusive access to a growing stable of Amazon-branded products like baby wipes.

    Today, Amazon says Prime has “tens of millions of members” in the U.S., a typically opaque number from a company that hoards business metrics like state secrets. Analysts speculate there are between 40 and 50 million members worldwide.

    Whatever the case, Prime has turned out to be a crucial tool for acquiring customers for Amazon, helping it become the dominant e-commerce company it is now and a threat to all retailers. If Amazon’s cutthroat pricing reels in shoppers initially, Prime keeps them hooked.

    It’s also a strategy that has cost Amazon billions of dollars. On its own, fast shipping is a costly proposition, but factor in all those extras, and Prime quickly becomes a money pit.

    The sales pitch for shoppers to join the program is compelling. Everyone from shopaholics to families who need to regularly stock up on clothes, books and gadgets can do so without worrying about how much all those orders cost to ship.

    Amazon, in turn, gets loyal return customers. It also gets a more predictable and steady stream of revenue by selling those memberships much like Costco, the warehouse retailer.

    “We really wanted to make it easy for customers — the idea of, ‘make the decision once, and then for the year, you don’t have to think about it,” says Greg Greeley, Amazon Prime’s vice president and one of the executives who attended that meeting in Bezos’ boathouse alongside Jeff Wilke, then senior vice president of customer service, and Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak.

    Before Prime, most packages took a week or more to get from door-to-door. Anyone who wanted their orders quickly would have to pay FedEx or UPS big bucks or just have to wait. In some cases, that meant customers would end up visiting a local Wal-Mart or Target instead.

    At the time, Amazon wasn’t exactly the big bruiser in e-commerce that it is now. Yes, it was big. But it still faced stiff competition from brick and mortar retailers. Executives also worried intensely about eBay. Although its auction business was already in decline, eBay had proven Amazon’s fiercest competition since the late 1990s, when Amazon began branching out beyond books into sales of music, electronics and toys.

    With Prime, Amazon did what it does best — it expanded quickly and aggressively. Over the last 10 years, the number of available items through Prime grew from 1 million to 20 million. Prime also pushed into international markets: first to Japan, the UK and Germany, then France, Italy and Canada.

    In 2011, Amazon added a Netflix-like video streaming service to the Prime package. Instant Video, as it was called then, rolled out with 5,000 movies and TV episodes, just a fraction of Netflix’s catalog at the time. It was a move that surprised some pundits, who said it seemed like too much of a detour.

    But Amazon’s Greeley argues that shipping and video streaming make sense together. If Prime members liked what they saw on Instant Video, they might buy digital movies and television shows à la carte, and in turn, remain loyal shoppers, further fueling Amazon’s bottom line.

    That’s exactly what happened, according to Greeley. From 2011 to 2014, the number of Prime’s subscribers soared, which Amazon largely attributes to the allure of video streaming.

    Instant Video now has a catalog of 40,000-plus TV shows and movies from licensing deals with distributors such as Viacom and HBO. It also has a library from LoveFilm, a European DVD and movie streaming business that Amazon scooped up for nearly $317 million in 2008.

    Hoping to make Prime Instant Video more compelling, Amazon began developing its own shows. In late 2010, it formed Amazon Studios, a Hollywood production arm that produces series and films from scripts submitted by the public through its website. Studios has produced just three pilots from that pipeline. Its biggest hits have been more standard Hollywood fare. The dark family comedy Transparent, with Arrested Development actor Jeffrey Tambor as a transgender parent, received two Golden Globe awards this year for best TV series and best actor.

    Amazon would not say how many Prime members use its video streaming service. But according to a report from Sandvine, a company that makes networking equipment for Internet providers, Prime Instant Video remains a distant second to Netflix but continues to grow. From March 2013 to September 2014, its share of Internet traffic in North America during peak hours of 7 p.m. to 11 p.m more than doubled from 1.27% to 2.6%. That still pales in comparison to Netflix, which accounted for over one-third of web traffic during the same period.

    “I think we could have moved more quickly to provide even better TV shows and movies,” admits Michael Paull, a former Sony Music executive who now leads Amazon’s digital video efforts.

    Which is why Amazon funneled $1.3 billion into Prime Instant Video in 2014. In January, the company followed up by saying it would produce 12 movies this year and signed Woody Allen to direct his first TV series exclusively for Prime Instant Video in 2016.