LL Beans New Order Policy

LL Bean launches free shipping for US, Canadian orders

Juan Martinez March 25, 2011

LL Bean introduced free standard shipping without a minimum purchase amount to all US and Canadian addresses on March 25. The multichannel retailer will also increase Visa cardmember benefits by doubling rewards on purchases made with LL Bean Visa cards."

Taken from  http://www.dmnews.com/ll-bean-launches-free-shipping-for-us-canadian-orders/article/199247/

I view this as an extremely good idea on LL Beans part. I think it will bring in more overall business which will account for the loss in profit from the shipping price. 

"LL Bean tested free shipping offers with no minimum purchase and found customer response to be overwhelming, the retailer said in a statement"

"However, free shipping is also a gamble for retailers, said Joseloff, because they could be forced to sacrifice profit to gain a larger volume of orders. “But it can serve as a differentiator,” he added."

These are just two points that show the danger of doing this type of shipping but it also shows the benefits. It would make perfect sense for overall business to increase seeing as sometimes shipping can cost as much as the actual product. I believe this will give LL Bean a lot more business and hopefully a lot of other online ordering will follow suit.

Do you think that every company could benefit from this?