Ask HN: Why do we still buy things by browsing catalogs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do we still buy things by browsing catalogs?

6 pointsdannythecount8 comments

Every time we want to buy something online, we go through the same ritual.

Open a marketplace. Search. Scroll endless catalogs. Skip ads. Ignore “recommended” products. Compare listings that look almost identical.

Eventually fatigue wins and we click something — not because we’re sure it’s the best option, but because we want to stop spending time on it.

It’s strange that we’ve normalized this. Buying online often means navigating noise: catalogs, ads, rankings, and persuasion systems competing for attention.

What I keep wondering is this:

When personal AI agents become common, what prevents them from doing exactly the same thing?

If the interface to commerce remains “browse catalogs and search results,” then agents will simply automate the same inefficient process — crawling listings, parsing ads, and navigating ranking systems just to reach something the buyer already knew they wanted.

Maybe the real missing layer isn’t better search or better recommendations.

Maybe it’s a way to express structured intent instead of browsing.

Curious if others think catalog-based commerce is the wrong interface for an AI-driven world.

How does one know what they want until they see it or imagine it?

When you can't imagine, you're stuck with searching, searching that comes in many forms, such as scanning catalogs, walking aisles, or letting someone else do it altogether.

If you can imagine what you want and describe it with sufficient language, you can have someone else (or something) go and fetch it for you, but you're still stuck with the problem of not getting _exactly_ what you want, so again, you must parse the results... or get stuck with whatever is returned first.

Ad the end of the day, it's a question of how much you care about getting the thing you want vs getting something that is close enough, and the answer is in how much effort you, personally, want to spend.

Amazon tried do automate ordering, so people didn’t have to browse the catalog, with things like the Dash. This was also the goal of Alexa too, but almost no one does it. This failed, I think because people don’t trust it. Amazon has too many items that are just weird, or the price is sky high for some inexplicable reason. There is too much variability to trust AI and a voice assistant. It would require so much back and forth that it is easier just of browse manually.

I read Google was building AI into their shopping experience. I don’t use Google, so I’m not sure if this has actually rolled out. In many ways I would liken this to telling a family member that I was “an alarm clock” for my birthday, then trusting they will get something I like. That requires me to either not care about the details, or to trust that family member knows me well and shares my taste. I don’t feel that way about AI.

Fundamentally, it's because the "marketplace" is owned, operated and funded by the seller. So, they fill it with ads and dark patterns to get you to buy what they want you to buy, which is probably some high-margin junk, and not what you want to buy.

If there were a hypothetical "marketplace" that was operated by, say, a consumer co-operative, funded by subscriptions from consumers, then it would operate with different incentives. It would be something like... Consumer Reports. But, it turns out, people would rather scroll through ads than pay for that kind of service with money, so that's why we have what we have.

Even a traditional marketplace owned by a municipality, or an association of vendors, or a shopping mall, is a bit more consumer friendly because they impose some standards on the tenants/vendors. A true "marketplace", like a stock market, or a fruit and vegetable market, needs to be vendor neutral, and there aren't any "marketplaces" like that on the internet.

What are the lasting characteristics of real markets in the world with hundred or a thousand year history? Are there lessons in utility for online marketplaces to build brighter features for buyers and sellers so they can win out vs online marketplaces with darker patterns?

Why would I give you my thoughts, in my own voice, if you clearly won't use your own voice to ask?

But this actually comes from my own voice. When I ask this question to peopple around me, most don’t even seem bothered by the process anymore. It feels like we’ve simply been conditioned to accept it. From the old printed catalogs.

Look at the Grainger catalog which has hundreds of pages, and also is quite well-done online.

With the book in your hand you can flip through over 100 pages per minute, that puts the online version to absolute shame.

Online "catalogs" are awful.

"Real" catalogs are art. "Art?" you say?

My Dad was a commercial artist. He made electrical products look as cool as book covers for pirate novels. "Real" catalogs spark the imagination. I can't say that for the lifeless still photos of online galleries all built to the same formula.

Step back and look at what much of "modern progress" looks like. Cars still don't drive themselves like the chauffeur did. I still spend lots of time loading and unloading the dishwasher (a mechanical device, not a person) and of course, scraping dried-up bits that survive the machine. And an AI that orders me clothes replaces Mommy or your butler ... I just shop at the thrift store. Mainly for the "surprise" factor.

And, I REALLY don't want the store, online or otherwise, to know too much about me, even if that means a plethora of unsuitable choices presented.

My current peeve is DuckDuckGo, which, not knowing anything about me, interprets my search terms for technical and historical information as "The most popular movie in recent times that appropriated an extremely common noun or verb" or of course, the nearest brew-pub to my geolocation.

I just plug in search terms and qualifiers (and disqualifiers) by the boatload, until the fluff lessens.

Admittedly, my favorites are catalogs from seed and plant companies, which spark dreams of a giant garden, such as my grandfather had.

So here's a proposition and a question. In the past, when jobs were incerdibly scarce, and were lost to the first wave of outsourcing (which caused a ton of xenophobia among the masses and helped elect a "very isolationist" president [0]), I wondered if FAB on a local level might give people jobs creating localized and bespoke products.

Will AI front-end bespoke FAB fabs?

[0] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/385521-trump-we-...

> Trump: We don’t want to be the policemen of the world BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/30/18

> “We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

> “We’re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn’t be the priority,” he said.

> Trump ran on the promise that he would extricate the U.S. from foreign wars.

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