I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy? And we need to set it up first. How is that any better than recurring ordering or just opening the website and ordering it? Are we expected to have an entire wall of dashes at our place?
I guess we'll need to sort them alphabetically or by color, so we don't waste time searching for the button we need.
Even if I find this idea wasteful, I think amazon does the right move with just experimenting.
A button that costs somewhere between $5 and $10 might result in something like $240 worth of sales over its lifetime. (eg. 1 sale per month x $10 sale price x estimated 24 month lifetime)
Seems scalable to me.
I think the Amazon Fresh Direct concept mentioned elsewhere by mason55 makes a lot more sense. Stuck to the front of my fridge I want a little scanner--one on my fridge, one by my cabinet, one in my laundry room. Running something across the barcode scanner when it's low/empty is as easy as pressing a button, and doesn't mean I have to put a button on/beside every single item, especially ones that move around my disorganized shelves.
As someone else mentioned though, think of it as "Dash, the physical button" + "Dash, the API". The API is probably the long term goal, the physical button is just a (temporary) drop-dead simple API client that people can use today. Amazon is likely betting on smart-fridges/-pantries/-homes catching up in the future
Edit: in the near-future, I imagine Amazon adding a touchscreen (so it's not product specific) without adding much to BoM. They can also charge manufactures for on-device screen-time (who doesn't like ads that convert to an immediate sale?)
Trying to add a changing ad screen to this would kill the battery life because of the check-ins to fetch the next ad. I also don't see that generating many sales because the customer would still need to change their set order, I think few people would accept Amazon outright changing what the button ordered based on the current ad.
Also, I don't need a wall of buttons, a few inside the bathroom cabinet, a few inside the kitchen cabinet, a few at my workbench, in the garage, in my shed, is all I need.
Writing it off might be premature, at least it is worth a try.
Were they? From what I recall people were saying, "Why isn't this catalog a webpage yet?"
I'm not sure if buying a bunch of little buttons and plastering them all over my house is necessarily convenient. Convenience is largely counter-intuitive. For example, you'd think everyone would get their groceries delivered at this point, but most of us drive to the grocery store. There's a larger convenience in having all these products at your fingertips, trying different brands, shopping for lower priced items, seeking deals, etc. You lose this flexibility with the Dash. Its also really ugly to have what look like ads plastered all over your home.
I'm surprised we all don't have a home robot with enough computer vision and fuzzy logic to figure out what we're low on and produce a list of items that need to be bought that week. I feel like some kind of robot revolution that was supposed to happen never did, so we're finding weird automation solutions that don't really work. I imagine this is what is was like when computers were rare and you could only use the ones at work because home computers weren't a thing yet. Smith-Corona kept making better and better typewriters but you really just want a word processor and printer.
Ah, Google's ill-fated attempt to scan all catalogs and put them online
I mean, what's the idea, having a button for every single product we buy?
In markets with Amazon Fresh they are also trialing a single-device Dash. It operates as a barcode scanner and microphone and adds things to your Dash List on Fresh. Then you can go in and edit them or actually confirm them to your cart.
I have one and it's very, very useful. It hangs from my fridge and whenever I finish something I scan it and when I think of something I need I just speak it into the mic. It made me an instant convert from FreshDiret.
I once had coffee on recurring order. Then I went on vacation, and I was always one tin ahead. Then I had a business trip, and I was 2 tins ahead, then I was sick for a week and didn't want to eat anything. it was too much.
I once set up a recurring order on wine, at first I drank a bottle every other day. What fun! but then I just wanted a glass with dinner every now and then. Bottles started piling up, and now I have a good $100 of wine that tastes like vinegar.
Recurring orders suck. If you have a huge house to store things if you aren't on a perfect schedule it might work. For normal people, it's not ideal.
Maybe the idea won't work but it sounds worth experimenting with to me.
I think the goal is also to make using the button easier than just opening the webpage and ordering it so that when you notice you're running low you can just press the button instead of doing what most people do and adding it to a grocery list. It's also far easier than figuring out how often to set up the recurring ordering.
Their aim is at the utility closet and bathroom consumables like soaps/detergents, paper towels, and maybe cleaning products. Things that are stored an some particular place in the house where when you're getting low on X you push the button and get more 2-3 days later.
It's a button for every repeatable commodity buy you make. Most applicable use cases are: toilet paper, detergent, cleaning supplies, certain groceries. In other words, it eliminates pretty much all friction to ensuring that you're always stocked with those products. You're right to be skeptical, but even just reducing a small amount of friction to buying means better convenience for the consumer and more money for Amazon.
You can certainly choose other brands to put in the machine, but every 40 cycles another box of Tide Pods will show up on your doorstep.