Amazon's charity donation program, AmazonSmile to be shut down

[Ink]

Content source

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562036/amazon-closing-amazonsmile-charity-platform-announcement

Amazon is shutting down its AmazonSmile charity program next month. The closure coincides with a variety of cost-cutting efforts announced by the e-commerce giant that includes laying off thousands of employees.

The AmazonSmile program functioned like an overlay for the standard Amazon site, allowing users to shop as normal, but select a charity to which the e-retailer donated 0.5 percent of the cost of all eligible products. Amazon claims that over $377 million has been donated through the scheme since it launched in 2013, but in its closure notice suggested this was not sufficient to keep the scheme running.

AmazonSmile will shut down on February 20th.

“After almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped,” the company said in a press release. “With so many eligible organizations — more than 1 million globally — our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin.”

Charities enrolled in the program will still be able to receive additional donations until the program closes, and Amazon said it will be making a one-time donation to participating charities “equivalent to three months of what they earned in 2022 through the program.”

Insight by an ex-Amazon employee [Credit: Reddit]

Here’s the most messed up part. I used to work at Amazon corporate, let me tell you how the entire program Amazon Smile got created.

So basically, when a customer wants to buy a product, they usually go straight to Amazon.com and enter what they’re looking for. But there’s also a large segment of customers who begin their search on google, and ends up at Amazon. Well guess what. When that type of search to purchase experience happens, Amazon has to pay google. Internally, Amazon thought that if they could force users to go straight to Amazon, offer a small but obviously less amount of money to charity from each customer than would have been paid to google, it would help kill customers going to google, save Amazon more money than paying google, and be good overall for the brand value of Amazon.

That’s why for the program to work, the user has to start shopping at smile.amazon.com. Until recently, the option to use amazon smile wasn't even available in the app, and even then the user still had to 'renew' being a part of Smile multiple times a year. There is no way for a customer to go through the traditional shopping experience, and then during checkout decide they want to give a portion of their purchase to charity, because giving to charity isn't the point of the overall program. Amazon Smile was developed by the Traffic Optimization team, whose entire purpose is increasing efficiency and lowering costs of getting customers to Amazon. A team of Amazon employees whose sole purpose is doing good in the world doesn't exist, despite employees repeatedly asking for such a team to be built in pretty much every single all-hands meeting.

Literally everything the company does is about profits, and extended customer lifetime value. Everything. Even the charity programs are just designed to save Amazon money.
edited to add clarity.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

save Amazon more money than paying google, and be good overall for the brand value of Amazon.

It was never about 'charity' or 'helping' people, it was about saving money and making more money and driving traffic. .