121–130 of 871 posts
We pay $179 a year for Amazon music. We use Alexa all the time to play music. How is that not a huge revenue success? It sounds like they are not properly factoring that in as a downstream impact.
The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…
I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...
The question is would it make people shop more? If you buy one set of paper towels a week, and Costco rolls out a voice interface, would you now start ordering 2 or 3? If not, what return are they getting on the billions of dollars in additional spending?
In reality people would use it for a day, go "neat", and switch right back to the website or app.
The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…
I dunno, I feel like the value was priced in the purchase price for me. I would not consider paying both a purchase price and subscription fee for it and probably not a subscription fee at all because all they ever do is go up. What would I do with this dumb robot in my house when I don't agree to pay for their latest fee structure.
Throwaway here but I used to work in Alexa org at Amazon and was amazed by how big the org was (thousands and thousands of people) considering it doesn't seem to be a big revenue generator I remember constantly hearing about projects other teams were working on thinking "why would anyone use that" or "how would that ever make money" Just trying to shoehorn alexa into as many domains as possible It was like empire bui…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...
To build on the Costco analogy: for any given product category they typically only have three specific options: good, better, best. I could tell Costco bot that I need AA batteries and it would ask me if I prefer Duracell, Kirkland brand, or cheapest. I trust that either of them will be plenty good, so I would say cheapest. Amazon has a vastly different experience with thousands of indistinguishable Chinese knockoffs…
The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…
> Make it a value add in my life and I wouldn't mind paying a subscription fee for it. I dunno, I feel like the value was priced in the purchase price for me. I would not consider paying both a purchase price and subscription fee for it and probably not a subscription fee at all because all they ever do is go up. What would I do with this dumb robot in my house when I don't agree to pay for their latest fee structure…
Throwaway here but I used to work in Alexa org at Amazon and was amazed by how big the org was (thousands and thousands of people) considering it doesn't seem to be a big revenue generator I remember constantly hearing about projects other teams were working on thinking "why would anyone use that" or "how would that ever make money" Just trying to shoehorn alexa into as many domains as possible It was like empire bui…
I once heard about a feature dogfooding invite that was sent out specifically for people with babies because they wanted to use Alexa always-listening to activate when a baby was crying and automatically order diapers or something ridiculous like that.
You could use "baby crying detected" as an automation trigger
The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…
I don't think they tried hard to create an experience user would like. Their shopping features is honestly very lacking. I think Alexa was just because of Amazon's norm of spending very high on R and D. That was the reason AWS was born. No one thought people would pay something like 10x just for consistency in cloud, but here we are. One AWS could cover 20 Alexas.
Speaking of Alexa: Can anyone explain the thought process behind making it possible to change the volume in small increments via buttons, but not via voice command (only in 10% increments)? I only use it as an internet radio player for background music and it's extremely annoying that it can't do that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...
> If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. The question is would it make people shop more ? If you buy one set of paper towels a week, and Costco rolls out a voice interface, would you now start ordering 2 or 3? If not, what return are they getting on the billions of dollars in additional spending? In reality people would use it for a day, go "neat", and switch right back to the…
No, that's not the question.
The question is would it make me shop more AT COSTCO.
And yes, it would make me shift some of my purchasing from my local grocery store to Costco. Costco is a long drive that's only worth it for large trips.
But if I could voice order for shipping or (even better) delivery? My local grocery with its god-awful parking lot full of blind 90-year-olds stuck in reverse would be in serious trouble.