As a student, I could take a $40 cab ride, or spend all day Saturday on train schlepping a shower curtain from Bed Bath, music from Best Buy, and a cheap dorm fridge from Wal-Mart. Or I could order it from Amazon at competitive prices, and it showed up on my door step in two days. Amazon was the equivalent of finding entire extra days in your schedule.
(Note, Prime came later. The original magic was two-days, $25 minimum, no membership.)
Maybe it's just me but I can't imagine getting a shot of dopamine from paying money to shop. $80 is pretty pricey at that.
I either upgrade to 2 day if I need it earlier and if I don't I'll use the saver shipping and get it in a week.
Do you not understand the appeal of any membership service? Costco is the same idea, for example. Or gym memberships, etc.
Remember that way back when it was business as usual to pay $10+ for shipping if you bought online. This meant that if you bought online more than 4 times throughout the course of an entire year, you were ahead. It also allowed you to buy at any time without worrying about the minimum purchase total, increasing buying frequency.
I wonder if I can order a Bagster on Amazon? Ayup!
Nothing? Lots of things I buy make me happier.
The stuff I buy that doesn't make me happy is often stuff that I need anyway (like dog food and toilet paper).
I remember Amazon's policy, like millions of others, because of a little shot of dopamine in my 20s. Amazon was the first to do it; we all discovered it and it seemed like a bit of the future.
I've used Wal-mart shipping, but couldn't tell you what the policy is, because it didn't strike me as new or unusual when I ran across it. I'm not sure you can communicate out of that hole in my cohort.
(Now, you might change my behavior if you convince me that Wal-Mart is better about weeding out counterfeits; that's new information).