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Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

This button isn't about saving time, it's about preventing the instances of not having something when you need it. The moment when you realize you need more of something is typically when you're using it. If you can literally just hit a button to order more, that's a significant change from having to do something else to order more.

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> This button isn't about saving time

... it's about creating a barrier to exit so that your customers won't comparison shop for different brands of detergent.

The increased switching cost isn't by force, though. Customers are less likely to switch because of convenience -- you're paying for the conveniene which, I think, means that Amazon is providing a service that consumers want.

Naturally. I'm just saying a few months down the road, you forget to care exactly how much that convenience is costing you.

I never care. I don't comparison shop. I always tick the "Prime only" button, even if it costs me extra. It's one of the nice luxuries of earning enough money that prices for consumables generally does not matter.

I don't know what the things I used in the dinner I just prepared costs. I only know roughly how much my weekly grocery bill comes to (it's all delivered - the order is auto-populated by Ocado's algorithms, so if I don't do anything I get a reasonable default set of products based on what I usually buy). And I like it that way.

You're living post-scarcity. Let's hope everyone will be able to, at some point.

Everyone who pays $100/year to get free two-day shipping for Amazon products lives post-scarcity.

Exactly. The ability to just tap some buttons on your phone and have an item show up doorstep is magical. The dash button is just another step in that direction. Its ultimate in convenience for people who want it.

It said in the video that you can choose what the button puchases. So, you can switch as much as you want. It may be a barrier to using something other than amazon, but you could make time to check to see if there are better deals and then switch the API call.

No, that's easily solved: you can set the product the button purchases (obviously), and the day after the API is made available a zillion little intercept-button-push-then-scrap-n-compare projects will pop-up on HN that find you the lowest priced product just in time when you push the button.

Some people seem to be missing the point and I don't blame you because brands are given a lot of protagonism in their announcement. But I think the presence of renowned/popular brands in their announcement is just marketing collateral as part of a bit more complex marketing strategy that involved partnerships, and that might be confusing for anyone if deeper thought is not involved.

IMHO the essence of this product is neither about enforcing brand loyalty nor saving time.

1- Brand loyalty benefits well established brands, yes, so amazon probably got big companies on board by offering brand placement on their marketing material among other benefits.

2- Saving time (and cognitive flow/energy) benefits consumers, yes. There is some risk to follow brand reputation instead of product quality, agree, but that is a manageable risk, so amazon can potentially get consumers on board.

The essence and reason of why this product/service came to be, answers to one question only; 'How does amazon benefit?' and it is brilliant.

From my POV this little button is not just a way to introduce an enhanced experience to an existing and growing consumer behavior[1] that would result in greater sales for amazon; more than a product they introduced a service/platform[2] that can be seamlessly integrated to new home appliances, so amazon is effectively expanding its presence into a diverse and conveniently positioned custom/customizable 'points of sale' inside people's homes, making itself more and more ubiquitous as time goes by and more companies and individual innovators adopt their new service/platform, and their investment to accomplish this was little compared to the alternative of investing in manufacturing their own home appliances, but that's not brilliant, that's only natural and expected from a company like amazon.

It also places amazon's brand on not all but many people's minds as a high-tech high-quality home appliances brand by association to the actual home appliances brands, and amazon is not really manufacturing that kind of hardware (...yet), that's the brilliant part (an opportunity that they may or may never exploit, either because non-compete agreements or because it wouldn't make sense for their business plans or because Jeff Bezos decides not to because reasons, an opportunity nonetheless).

[1]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-food-delivery-1/... [2]: https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-replenishment-service

Precisely. Everybody here is talking about the button, but for Amazon this is about selling zillions of these buttons to product manufactures and achieving lock-in.

Its about the API and what new purchasing flows will be created by eager startups, resulting in new MRR for Amazon.

My problem is with some items that I buy only twice a month, like bath soap or mayonnaise. I notice that it's about get empty (or it's already empty :() and I put them in my mental to-buy list. If I'm lucky I'll remember them the next time that I go to the supermarket. And probably also the following time and a few more times until I realize that I got a lot of it and I remove the item from the list. So I don't have to buy them for a few weeks...

I really like that it ignores the repeated pushes.

> Unless you elect otherwise, Dash Button responds only to your first press until your order is delivered.

I switched to buying things of this nature in bulk. You're more prone to ordering more of something if you realize you're down to the last 3 out of 10. That gives you 3 more tries to make sure you order it.

I don't have space in my apartment for three of everything.

Your point is my solution doesn't work for you because it would require you to purchase three of everything you would ever purchase? What an odd way to live your life.

I buy those things like...once every 3 months

I'm pretty sure my jar of mayo has lasted me for, like, a year.

I do something similar except that I use an app (AnyList) rather than keeping a mental list. Better yet the app is shared with my fiance. Whichever of us is next in the store (usually me) can be sure to get everything.

Another good use case is that I can head to the store as soon as I realize we're out of something, and by the time I get there, the list has everything else that she thought of.

Actually, it's about a vendor making sure you buy their brand (again) when you need to fill up instead of going to the store and looking at the 50 choices in the detergent aisle one more time.

Really? Lots of people regularly switching their detergent?

Yes, really.

Do this: pretend you own Tide. Do you want people pressing a button that sends you money for more tide, or do you want them going here: https://www.google.com/search?q=laundry+aisle&espv=2&biw=144...

Oh yea. Commodities. Competing to win marginally against a well-known set of consumer value drivers.

This. The primary purpose is to avoid the pain of not having what you need, and the arguments and bad mood that follows, simply because you didn't add something to a list or thought you would remember to buy but didn't

Never mind the time saving, what's the real time cost? How long does the battery last? How do you know when it fails? How exploitable is it? How do I do security updates?

Apparently carrying one's phone in one's pocket is less common than I thought.

Pressing a button is milliseconds, and can be done as a complete afterthought, while still doing your current task. Taking out your phone, navigating to a website and placing an order means you have to stop what you are doing, and do something else.

When the time to complete tasks changes by an order of magnitude - even going from seconds down to milliseconds - our behavior tends to change. We easily accept this notion with developer related tasks such as compiling and testing. I don't see a difference here.

Imagine if developers only built and tested once or twice a month.

Now I come out with a new product where the entire pitch is, that build-and-compile you do once or twice a month now takes one second instead of ten! Oh, and it only works for one project. If you work on multiple projects, buy multiple products.

Would this be worthwhile? I don't see it.

Developer tasks like compiling and testing benefit from small efficiency gains because we do them constantly. Or the efficiency gains allow us to move from a model where we do them rarely to a model where we do them constantly. Neither one applies here. You won't buy detergent any more frequently with this button, and it's not something you do often.

It's not just about time saved. I tend to forget things I don't do often, so I automate them, even though setting up the automation might take more time than it will save me. As soon as the automation is set up, I no longer need to worry about it, and next time I can just push the button.

I won't buy detergent more frequently, but because it's easier, I'm more likely to be in a situation where I actually have it where I need it. If I could buy either at the moment I realize I'm about to run out, I would. Instead, I have to remember when I'm out at the grocery store, and I often forget, and then end up having to make a special trip the next day just to pick up that one thing.

I, for one, don't have my phone handy when I'm doing laundry in my pajamas, or while shaving in my bathrobe.

Phones are annoying, and the UI of most apps is user-hostile. Here are the equivalent steps you have to do to accomplish the same thing as this button does:

    - Wipe your hands from moisture/whatever you had on them.
    - Find your phone in your pocket.
    - Orient it.
    - Unlock it.
    - Exit whatever app you left running in the foreground.
    - Open the app drawer.
    - Find the ordering app.
    - Click through several layers of UI to get to the right product.

And only now you're in the same position as after just pressing a button. This is a significant cognitive load. When I realize I need to order something, I want to order it, not navigate through countless steps. Having to do more than two actions is too much.

Exactly, a cellphone app can get the job done but it is a great cognitive deviation from whatever task you had at hand at the moment you realize you ran out of something(1). So amazon's dash button is not an innovation on getting something done, but get it done faster and more conveniently, and that alone makes sense for an enterprise whose profit depends greatly from understanding consumer behavior. So I agree with TeMPOraL, it is not ridiculous at all.

And there's a bigger picture outside of comparing the convenience between using this little button as opposed to mobile apps, but that's off topic for this branch of the conversation, if you're interested IMHO & my brief reasoning, read this other brach[2] (also because DRY).

(1): Optimally you realize you are about to run out of something before it happens. [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299505

You have probably never worn women's jeans. They have ridiculously small pockets, barely big enough to squeeze my S5 into.

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