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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

    - 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 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

I live in silicon valley where all these new delivery services are being tested, and I almost never go to the store. Google Shopping Express delivers non-perishable groceries to my home within 24 hours, Instacart delivers fresh groceries within 2 hours, and Amazon delivers everything else I need within 2 days. I really want to sign up for Amazon Fresh because they deliver perishables and everything else same day, but it's a little pricey.

I hate going to the store now (especially since our local market isn't very nice - I love a good market). For me it is a big chore. I work from home so I'm rarely even "driving by" the market.

Amazon, google, and others want to enable a world where no one goes to the store (and we all order from them). It's nice not having to go to the store. Your cute calculation of 4.3 minutes saved is making assumptions that totally don't apply to people like me. I don't want to take a 30 minute experience and shave ten seconds off, I want to eliminate the trips to the store entirely.

It's fine if you don't see the need for new products, but just because you don't see the need doesn't mean there isn't one. Not saying this product has a need (I feel like I can use my smartphone) but you've completely missed the big picture of deliveries for everything. In San Francisco you can get a bento box delivered in 15 minutes for $12, and I just got a flyer for dinners delivered starting at $8.

Everyone wants to do deliveries, and once they're done by robot it will be so cheap we'll all have it.

What I don't understand is button-for-delivery for uncommonly ordered items.

You want to order detergent online? Great! Me too! But why do you need a specialized button that only does that? That's the part that makes no sense.

It's also self-selecting: if you ARE searching for the absolutely lowest price, or are price sensitive, you're not the right target audience for this kind of tech or company :)

It -does- make sense if you take it as a way to introduce not a product ("specialized button") but a platform[1] for long overdue and much needed innovation that some very influential people have started to fund and promote[2]. It is not the only way to do it, but it is amazon's way to facilitate it and in the process get some market pioneering advantages. A company like amazon doesn't have the infrastructure to start building home appliances but it required little effort for them to contribute in a way that brings them great benefits. Smart move, amazon.

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

Because it's a tangible reminder that you need to buy new X and it removes all the barriers entirely to that. It's wildly convenient.

Might I remind you:

- Locate mobile device

- Swipe/Unlock mobile device

- Locate Safari App/Amazon app

- Tap and wait for Safari to load

- Access amazon.com

- Type in 'X'

- Locate results and click on option

- Press 'one click purchase' for irony

vs.

- Press a button.

Or are you just being hyperbolic?

I don't know about you, but I make a trip to the grocery store about 1.5x every week anyways. I definitely would never use an online food/grocery service; I prefer to see the lettuce I'm buying when I take it off the shelf.

So, given that I'm already at the grocery store something like 80 times a year, and assuming I need to buy more laundry detergent 5 times a year, that's 16 opportunities for me to not pay Amazon shipping and just pick up a jug of detergent when I'm going to be out shopping anyways.

Assuming this isn't an April 1 joke and I just got trolled, hard, this is definitely a solution in search of a problem.

What's your point? Neither of us knows which products are here to stay and which aren't.

If so, what happens when, say, your apples come bruised?

Me: these apples are bruised

Tesco man: sorry sir, let me refund that straight away. And keep the apples, you could make a pie with them.

Though in five years of online grocery shopping I've only returned a couple of items. The apples have made it all the way unbruised from New Zealand after all, four more miles is nothing.

That sounds like a much worse experience than simply going to the market and picking out unbruised apples.

Or are you just being hyperbolic?

Tough call, but I guess I'd rather pay less and get quality fruit every time.

Shopping takes maximum 45 minutes and I like browsing the different cuts of meat at the market and/or my local butcher.

Had you gone to the market you would not have bruised apples.

It is predictable enough (and with options for "always include" and "never automatically include") that we quite often don't bother adjusting the order.

My grocery shopping have never been less stressful.

I hadn't noticed that they help you to remember your order and try to deliver what you normally have. Is this automatic then. What happens if you are out of the country for a couple of weeks?

Is this kind of service not common in the US then? It seems to be massive in the UK now.

Did the early humans really need wheels, when they were already fit enough to run and carry weights?

You may make a trip to the grocery store about 1.5x every week, but I "never" go to the grocery store any more - it's all delivered. I can not imagine going back to shopping in person other than the odd "emergency" purchase.

More importantly to cover the various other uses I could see for this, such as printer toner, just the grocery store would be insufficient.

This is a solution in search of a different demographics than you. Like me.

Maybe that's your daily pattern, but for example in my case, this almost never happens. I just don't sit on my couch thinking about home maintenance; I have too much other, more interesting stuff to do. Phones have really annoying, user-hostile UI, so I don't even use mine much at home. They are good enough for commuting, when I can't really do anything else except maybe read a book, so I schedule tasks I can do from my spartphone for the to/from-work route.

If the use case was something like, push this button and dinner arrives, I'd say it's fantastic. If it was something like, push this button on your phone to re-order detergent, I'd say that's pretty sensible. But a physical button to order an infrequently ordered product makes no sense to me.

Even for Amazon it's cheap, and quickly pays for itself.

The line between physical and digital is blurring more every day.

Pretty much every other time the phone will be in my pocket and the value would be less. But even then it'd mean fishing my phone out, unlocking, starting an app instead of just pushing a button. Not torture by any means, but if I can just stick a button there and not have to think about it again, then awesome.

One of the primary rules of running a business is to make it as easy as possible for people to give you their money. This makes it ridiculously easy.

1. Find my iPhone (I don't carry it with me around the house)

2. Enter my PIN to unlock it

3. Open Safari

4. Navigate to Amazon.com

5. Type in their search bar and browse through the results

6. Click on the product I want

7. Add it to my cart

8. Go to check out and confirm settings (e.g. delivery speed)

9. Place order

It's actually way more cumbersome than it has to be.

When I'm in the privacy of my own home, and I'm not expecting guests, you'd be hard pressed to find me dressed at all, let alone in anything that has pockets ;)

But wait, how do you handle nudists?

Out of clean clothes today,

Also laundry detergent,

Imagine surprise face on UPS man when I open door.

Push button like a hamster

When I need something

out of detergent, as well.

Hi UPS man.

"Get me some clean clothes!"

From the description of it, I think the button wouldn't work if you don't carry a phone with you, as it depends on it.

There is a better solution than spreading branded landfill buttons across your house!

There was an article posted about usage of bands in Disney world. The idea is to have technology integrated with you such that the idea of interacting with a generic computer shouldn't exist.

Amazon have had a few "ridiculous" ideas (e.g. drone delivery, 1 hour delivery, pre-emptive shipping). I think they know these ideas are a stretch but it gets people thinking in a new way and out of it there may be a few more solid ideas. Product marketing by annealing if you will.

Is this like, what society wants though? Are we all here to be waited on hand and foot, have our every need taken care of? Do we end up being able to solve more real problems this way, or do we end in a dearth of imagination? Interesting implications - we either end up with a higher percentage of people being self-actualized or an idiotistopia a la wall-e and idiocracy.

I think I'm better off for the effort I put into things like buying detergent, walking to work and figuring out my way instead of using GMaps. It's not like I'd be worse off if I stopped doing any one of those things, but the lifestyle in aggregate where you have a button for everything does have an impact I think.

I have a hard time seeing how people can develop the schlep tolerance and planning skill to do something challenging and big if they can't remember to buy detergent.

I did eventually get mine back in February or so. The add to shopping list feature is very convenient. I don't see this obsoleting that Echo function which is much more general purpose. (Can add anything whether you get it from Amazon or somewhere else.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9297279

Let's merge these two threads together and see which wins!

Buying groceries is a solved problem, mostly.

It takes more than 10 seconds to go to the store and get detergent. I suppose it'll save the 30 seconds it takes to order detergent on a phone, but the big gain is that it's RIGHT THERE so you can't forget to order it and then find yourself dead in the water and have to go to the store to get detergent instead of wait 2 days for amazon to deliver it.

As for the big gain being that it's right there, I figured everybody's phones are right there too. Apparently not everybody does that. Seems like if you really find this to be a problem, you could just keep your phone in your pocket.

Edit: and the answer is pretty clear, I think. If people actually go for this, it'll be a massive advantage for Amazon. It essentially banishes competition permanently for people who use the button regularly. It'll also make people much less price sensitive. So I completely understand why Amazon would try to push this. I just don't understand why anyone else finds it interesting besides that.

Could apps be better? Sure. Can any app get as good as a button that's already right there when you realize you need a replacement? I don't see how.

Eh about once every 2 months.

It's taken me 2 weeks so far to remember to get it. I go to the store almost daily. :(

> It's taken me 2 weeks so far to remember to get it. I go to the store almost daily. :(

This is a behavior that isn't going to change by having a thousand buttons all over your house. Maybe you won't ever worry about running out of detergent or dogfood again, but there's always something else. "Oh shit, I bought pasta for dinner but I forgot to buy pasta sauce!" What's the solution, get a pasta sauce button?

I see nothing wrong with dedicating a wall of my kitchen entirely to Amazon buttons for everything in my fridge and pantry. :)

As I mentioned in another comment, though, a better system would probably be to use some cheap, single-purpose wall-mountable tablet computer (probably e-Ink based, maybe even with a column of physical buttons instead of a touchscreen to bring costs down to a pittance) that one could load up with a list of products that need to be routinely reordered for a partiuclar room. If prices could be brought down considerably (if not free with Prime membership, as is being proposed for these Dash buttons), this could be pretty viable.

If I cannot check a list in 2 seconds of pulling out whatever said list is stored on, I am done.

I miss my old Palm. One push of the task list button and I could see what I needed to do next.

The choice is between having to remember to buy the product next time you go shopping, having to remember to order the product next time you are in front of the proper device, or not having to remember a thing.

Being able to move a task to 'done' as soon as it is recognized is a savings in cognitive load far more valuable than any time savings.

Then again, I am the type of person who frequently says "might as well do it now before I forget." Younger, more single people might not see the value in this sort of thing.

Clearly Amazon understands that human aspect, and credit to them for not getting stuck on the idea that if I have to go to the web site, they can up-sell while I'm there.

I don't get household supplies from Amazon now, but this is making me consider it just as soon as I've compared prices.

I suspect something similar was said by the horse owner the first time they saw a car.

There's an obvious reason Amazon is doing this: they're trying to continue to grow their share of the consumer's brain. When someone thinks about shopping, Amazon wants to be on the very short list of that thinking. So this button is a relatively inexpensive way to keep doing that. Get into someone's house, get into someone's mind, and try to show yourself as innovative.

With this system instead of adding an item to your list to process later it's processed immediately.

Perhaps you don't see the value in it, but that doesn't make it ridiculous. Why not just move along instead of complaining about a new option for those who do happen to appreciate it?

I'd use this. Every time I return from the store, there's always something I forgot to purchase. Yes, I so use a list. The problem is when, say, cooking, I actually focus on what I'm doing. When I'm running low on something, I don't rush to my phone to log it because it's an interruption that takes away from cooking (especially when there's a notification waiting for you). Amazon is providing an extremely low-friction solution that won't take your away from what you're focusing on.

I don't know how anyone actually remembers to do this. I know I don't. What inevitably ends up happening is that, despite making a bunch of trips to the store, at some point I'll discover that I'm out of dog food and make a purpose-specific trip to pick some up so my dog can eat. Later that day I'll remember, when I go to do laundry, that I'm also out of detergent. Then it will be dishwasher tablets.

Every bottle of Tide I buy at target also means amazon just lost out on a toilet paper sale and a paper towel sale and maybe some food if its a supertarget and all that other stuff target sells. Its not amazon selling a $20 bottle of tide but preventing the target sale of a $120 shopping cart full of junk.

Last month I had to go to store at least twice in the morning before work because we ran out of milk and my two year old was close to having mental breakdown without cereals for breakfast. We use combination of Google Shopping Express, Walmart and Safeway delivery services - they are godsend and save us enormous amount of time. Unfortunately Amazon Fresh is not available where we live.

Having one second ordering for regular staples will marketdly improve ordering process, especially if buttons are reliable and convinient to use.

It's definitely a common thing for me and my fiancee - we're not forgetful people, just busy. The less disruptions and banal activity in my life the better.

Why not order it on your phone at the moment you notice that you're running low? You can do that right now, without a special Amazon button.