Invisible asymptotes
eugenewei.com
eugenewei.com
>People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years.
>People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was to show, in the shopping cart and checkout process,
"People hate shipping charges irrationally", because they perceive them as unfair additional tax that distorts price and makes it harder to compare prices. If price was including shipping/vat/taxes as single variable no one would be confused by it. Its not a magic asymptotic limit, its basic psychology: People want simple interfaces, simpler solutions, simpler interactions.
Two TVs for the same base price, one with $49.99 shipping from Best Buy, and one with free (with prime) from Amazon? I'll go with Amazon because the product is exactly the same.
Those two Italian places down the street, except one of them doesn't do tipping? Sure I'll take that into account, but more importantly, which one has better food? And which has a better base price? Which one is quicker (or maybe which is more relaxed)? Which one gets my order right? This is all just as or more important than whether or not they a part of the tipping culture.
Now I am in the USA. I go to buy a large coffee for $2.79 and I end up paying $3.10. I hate this very much.
edit: all the downvotes.. want to reply instead?
Curious how this affects the velocity of M0 money
Under what circumstances?
Numerous airlines, Southwest excluded, come to mind as an anti-example--moving toward a more complicated, convoluted pricing and buying model for tickets.
The implicit point in my post above is that consumers are voting with their wallets for the low-cost fares, that are complicated and convoluted. So in this instance of airline tickets, there is large consumer demand for cheap tickets, simplicity be damned.
Southwest is the option for those who want simple and are willing to pay for it.
Amazon gave consumers simple and cheap.
The author seems to have a deep understanding of how businesses work. Some of it's pretty gross -- I hate reading about "creating desire", and similar dystopic capitalist memes -- but it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.
The application is not life-saving, but the conclusions are the same. It's like dynamite and atom splitting. You can use it for the good and for the bad.
> it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.
This is simple. They study people's behavior to drive it for their benefit. The basics of it should be taught in high school, so people better understand themselves.
And yeah, I'm reading about it because it's important to understand, anthropologically.
Driving demand is how some people discover lifelong hobbies.
Buddhists have this down pat: Desire is suffering.
I think people are pretty capable of finding hobbies on their own. We're connected to this global information network. It's not like people aren't being exposed to new ideas all the time. But telling them "you will be happier if you buy this" is disingenuous, and makes people question their existing happiness. That's... bad.
I'll tell you one place where it's appropriate, though -- if someone is already seeking recreation, and doesn't know which option they want, marketing a specific answer is fine. One of the reasons people love libraries is that they can go wander around and discover something they'd never heard of. But that's someone who is already looking for a book to spend time with! Compare to a banner ad saying "this book will fix your life", when someone was just trying to look up information on how to fix their mower. They don't need that. They need to fix their mower.
YES! I wish more people were comfortable dealing with negative feedback and not just receiving but also giving or soliciting it. IMO positive and negative feedback is complementary.
IMO, positive feedback is most useful for reinforcing patterns and trends - driving surplus by optimizing the current model. Negative feedback is most useful for generating alpha as it puts emphasis on where the real friction/desires are, what obstacles lie ahead and therefore what problem to solve instead of what is the best solution - allowing us to update our understanding, and break out of a cycle.
Having been on both sides of that conversation, it's really hard to deliver it, and takes humility to receive. But it's far more valuable.
That's totally fair, and a great distinction. I will say that learning to ask for clarification on negative feedback is a good skill to have. Not easy when you depend on a job for income, for sure.
This is something that SV has a problem with. Every product or company is assumed to be targeted at the whole world. There's no room for niche products. Either you take over the world or you end up shut down.
(Twitter is also notoriously bad at handling negative feedback)
This is a bit unfair, but keen.
I guess that's one way of overcoming these invisible asymptotes if all they plan to do is come up with creative ways to charge you.
I got charged by audible over 7 months, told them I wasn't ever interested, they send me 105$ back.
It's interesting when it comes to Twitter, the argument seems to be that everyone who is gonna use it has come across it, its features are well-known, and there's not much to be done other than accept that.
Which got me to thinking about cryptocurrencies. This has now been in the news across the whole planet, everyone has read about it, maybe not everyone really gets the technical details, but probably the value prop of decentralized currency has reached a huge number of people now.
Or is it? What do you think?
Whereas Twitter is basically sign up and type a text message.