This post looks at the top line results of the poll I did on drone delivery service - how much would you pay?
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What do medicine, batteries, and forgotten anniversary gifts have in common? They are the most likely items consumers will want delivered by drone once that service is available. At least, that’s the verdict from the consumers I surveyed in August and September of this year. In my post Drone Delivery: How Much Would You Pay?, I ran a poll with three simple questions:
- What’s the maximum amount you would be willing to pay for a package delivered by drone?
- Which of ten items would you want delivered in 30 minutes?
- Under what circumstance would you need something so quickly that you’d pay top dollar for it?
These are the top line results. Read more here: http://droneanalyst.com/2014/10/02/drone-delivery-numbers/
You can see the companion summary presentation with more complete graphs and charts of the data here: http://www.slideshare.net/ColinSnow/drone-delivery-bythenumbers
Comments
Okay here is why drone delivery will never be a viable delivery service. It's dependent on calm weather. http://www.suasnews.com/2014/09/31470/too-windy-real-life-drone-del...
http://www.airware.com/
Let's see?
1) What’s the maximum amount you would be willing to pay for a package delivered by drone?
No more than I pay for shipping by USPS or UPS.
2) Which of ten items would you want delivered in 30 minutes?
The only thing that comes to mind is a pizza. (Don't have to tip the delivery driver.)
3) Under what circumstance would you need something so quickly that you’d pay top dollar for it?
There is nothing! I could ever need that I would pay top dollar to have it delivered. All mail services, and some companies offer expedited delivery for an order if someone wants to pay for it.
I use the internet to look for bargains. Not to increase the price of what I want by paying top dollar to have it delivered. (Free shipping.) Just takes a time to get to the person who placed the order.
If I want something right away I just drive to the mall, or, store to get it. (It's nice to get out and about for a while.) Now lets reverse this concept drone delivery concept!
What about a person sending their own personal drone to pick up an order? Or call the store and have their driverless "pod car" pull up to loading docks at the mall, or, store. Then someone just puts my order in the trunk of my pod car and that's it. I'll be standing waiting as my pod car pulls up in front my apt. or house.
So the answer for me is, "No, I would not pay extra for expedited drone deliveries."
@Toby....that would be interesting. Like fruit flies off a dirty truck.
Long hauling bulk goods is cheap but individual deliveries to addresses is expensive.
The solution is to bulk load and long haul, then stop the long haul truck as it passes through each city and have the drones deliver from the truck. When the last drone returns, drive to the next city and repeat, charging the drones on the way.
Amazon, if you use this idea I want a check ;)
Thanks Jethro and Greg. @Greg - This wasn't a true research study - more a quick poll. I got less than 200 respondents (most came in via Twitter) and I didn't ask demographic questions, so no distribution break down.
As a follow up I looked at another camera example. The current Amazon best seller is the Nikon COOLPIX L830. It lists for US $197. Package weight is 1.1 lbs. A 20% delivery charge would be $39 and 30% would be $59. If ordered from a NY camera house the next day delivery charges from NY to CA would be the same as the Sony camera - $34. If drone delivery comes at a premium, then it seems to me the charge would be more than 30% of this item.
As usual... an awesome read!
Hi Colin, great work! Can you tell us what was the test group? How many people, and what was the distribution of age/occupancy? Or at least which sites on web did you show your survey on?