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Invisible asymptotes

eugenewei.com

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Re: Invisible asymptotes

#31

Post by squeaky-clean »

overcast wrote: post #26
FrozenVoid wrote: post #8

>Shipping fees. >People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years. >People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was to show, in the shopping cart and checkout proc…

The biggest issue with taxes, and shipping fees. Is that it becomes this last minute price increase at the very end of your shopping experience. We all know it's there, but it sucks seeing a shipping fee that is half 25% the cost of the item. Give us the full cost up front, if we want it, then we'll take it. But stop wasting our time with only finding out after we've filled our carts.

The tough part about this is you can't calculate the shipping fees until you know where the customer lives. And there's no better way to make customers leave your webstore than requiring a name and physical address before you're even allowed to browse (or be shown prices).

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#32

Post by squeaky-clean »

anarcticpuffin wrote: post #23
andromeduck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about tipping culture then? I wonder if that will go away as ecommerce becomes the norm.

Possible difference: - Shipping charges are presented to the buyer in a visceral way before they commit to the transaction. - Menu prices (sans tip) are presented to a diner and then they commit to the transaction. Later on, the tip rears its ugly head. This time delay is possibly enough for people to separate the tip as "later me's problem", or at least blissfully ignore it.

Also restaurants aren't all exactly the same, so lack of tipping can't be used as a strong point of comparison against their competition.

Two TVs for the same base price, one with $49.99 shipping from Best Buy, and one with free (with prime) from Amazon? I'll go with Amazon because the product is exactly the same.

Those two Italian places down the street, except one of them doesn't do tipping? Sure I'll take that into account, but more importantly, which one has better food? And which has a better base price? Which one is quicker (or maybe which is more relaxed)? Which one gets my order right? This is all just as or more important than whether or not they a part of the tipping culture.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#33

Post by phyzome »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #22
phyzome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distaste is from people wanting to "drive demand", doing it, or recommending it. Driving demand is, quite literally, making possibly-happy people unhappy and then offering a paid solution. Reducing people's happiness for profit is basically evil. And yeah, I'm reading about it because it's important to understand, anthropologically.

Why the automatic assumption that the people were happy before, and that they won't be happier after? Have you never been happier/better off after buying something that you didn't know you wanted? Driving demand is how some people discover lifelong hobbies.

No, generally when I buy something I didn't know I wanted, I soon feel vaguely "bleagh" about it and realize I had merely lusted after it, but that it didn't actually add anything to my life.

Buddhists have this down pat: Desire is suffering.

I think people are pretty capable of finding hobbies on their own. We're connected to this global information network. It's not like people aren't being exposed to new ideas all the time. But telling them "you will be happier if you buy this" is disingenuous, and makes people question their existing happiness. That's... bad.

I'll tell you one place where it's appropriate, though -- if someone is already seeking recreation, and doesn't know which option they want, marketing a specific answer is fine. One of the reasons people love libraries is that they can go wander around and discover something they'd never heard of. But that's someone who is already looking for a book to spend time with! Compare to a banner ad saying "this book will fix your life", when someone was just trying to look up information on how to fix their mower. They don't need that. They need to fix their mower.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#34

Post by jonknee »

esturk wrote: post #3

I know this is an Amazon PR piece but I need to point to their more recent aggressive behavior of growing revenue at the expense of user experience. My grips on their non refundable charges is a great example. Amazon will secretly renew your services without even emailing you and when you go to ask for a refund on a non agreed upon renewal, they will refuse to issue a refund. I guess that's one way of overcoming thes…

How is this an Amazon PR piece? The author hasn't worked for Amazon in many years and towards the end there is exploration of future barriers to Amazon.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#35

Post by heymijo »

FrozenVoid wrote: post #30
heymijo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People want simple interfaces, simpler solutions, simpler interactions." Under what circumstances? Numerous airlines, Southwest excluded, come to mind as an anti-example--moving toward a more complicated, convoluted pricing and buying model for tickets.

What consumers want != what corporations want. If that complex scheme is more profitable, it will be used. Perhaps this interface to buying tickets allows them to segregate the market better or exploit some psychological flaw.

I agree that what consumers want!=what corporations want.

The implicit point in my post above is that consumers are voting with their wallets for the low-cost fares, that are complicated and convoluted. So in this instance of airline tickets, there is large consumer demand for cheap tickets, simplicity be damned.

Southwest is the option for those who want simple and are willing to pay for it.

Amazon gave consumers simple and cheap.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#36

Post by hammock »

lkrubner wrote: post #27
FrozenVoid wrote: post #8

>Shipping fees. >People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years. >People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was to show, in the shopping cart and checkout proc…

I just got back from Europe. I loved the way that the price of each object was exactly what I paid. The coffee for 2 euros? It actually cost 2 euros. Now I am in the USA. I go to buy a large coffee for $2.79 and I end up paying $3.10. I hate this very much.

Well, when you hand over 2 euros that is inclusive of VAT (which if US resident you are not required to pay/entitled to rebate from the government) so the cost of a coffee is not really what's shown.

edit: all the downvotes.. want to reply instead?

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#37

Post by Molaxx »

I wonder if this shipping fees asymptote is the reason Amazon never shows me shipping rates until the last possible moment in the checkout process. That drives me crazy. They don't even show me if the item ships to my country until I try to pay for it... Arghhh

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#38

Post by dalore »

heymijo wrote: post #29
FrozenVoid wrote: post #8

>Shipping fees. >People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years. >People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was to show, in the shopping cart and checkout proc…

"People want simple interfaces, simpler solutions, simpler interactions." Under what circumstances? Numerous airlines, Southwest excluded, come to mind as an anti-example--moving toward a more complicated, convoluted pricing and buying model for tickets.

And airlines one of the most hated experiences. It's proving the point.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#39

Post by Molaxx »

luk32 wrote: post #4
phyzome wrote: post #2

This is a really interesting look into Amazon's business model around Prime, market segmentation in social media, and other things. The author seems to have a deep understanding of how businesses work. Some of it's pretty gross -- I hate reading about "creating desire", and similar dystopic capitalist memes -- but it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.

Why the distaste? I treat it as a study of phenomena. It's like a social study on rather grand scale. It doesn't different species much from the crowd dynamics, useful in better design of evacuation routes. The application is not life-saving, but the conclusions are the same. It's like dynamite and atom splitting. You can use it for the good and for the bad. > it's important to understand what's going on in these com…

But it's not just studying a phenomena. "driving desire" is an intervention and usually a neutral way of describing massive exploitation of human cognitive failings for purposes of monetary gains. Money is supposed to be a proxy measure for value, but these "desire driving" strategies are optimizing for the proxy. It's the ultimate manifestation of Goodhart's Law. You can very easily stop providing real value and still make money. Mind you, I'm not a communist and I see the advantages of a free market. But its failings stem from this problem. The only way to overcome these failings is by being critical. Like articulating distate for "desire driving" loudly and clearly. Hopefully this would lead to self regulating economical players which would allow us more freedom from actual formal violently enforced state laws. I do agree that teaching these strategies, critically, to high school students is a very good idea.

Re: Invisible asymptotes

#40

Post by overcast »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #31
overcast wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with taxes, and shipping fees. Is that it becomes this last minute price increase at the very end of your shopping experience. We all know it's there, but it sucks seeing a shipping fee that is half 25% the cost of the item. Give us the full cost up front, if we want it, then we'll take it. But stop wasting our time with only finding out after we've filled our carts.

The tough part about this is you can't calculate the shipping fees until you know where the customer lives. And there's no better way to make customers leave your webstore than requiring a name and physical address before you're even allowed to browse (or be shown prices).

nah zipcode is plenty sufficient. You can easily provide a little message on product pages saying, "want to know the full price?", with an input box for your code. Save it in a cookie. Or location aware?
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