Publishers Weekly in their article ‘Amazon Lets Readers Shop via Text Message’ alert us to the latest way Amazon want to capture sales, their new TextBuyIt service. The service does what it says on the can and lets customers find and buy all items from Amazon via cellphones. A customer must have already set up an Amazon account to use this new Amazon.com service but once achieved can buy books, electrical goods and any stocked product.
In effect it now enables customers to use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere via a select number of major US mobile service providers.
We applaud the way Amazon have laid out the instructions and FAQs on the service and simplified it such that the consumer knows exactly what to do. See for yourselves at TextBuyIt.
The questions are whether people want to buy this way and what they will buy off the service? The text users may well see it as a natural extension of their thumbs and welcome the opportunity to buy this way. We would suggest that this works best where the consumer knows exactly what they want and either trust Amazon pricing or knows the price point to buy at. It may not so be so efficient where the consumer wants to compare or is unsure about the price points. Therefore if you know the book you want and the price you want to pay and you are a text convert and have an Amazon account it may appeal. However with the speed at which broadband mobile services are rolling out, then it makes sense to search, select and compare using mobile web services either via a cell or laptop.
