It'll be interesting to see what Amazon does to continue to get more information on people's shopping habits.
Amazon Dash
61–70 of 262 posts
Re: Amazon Dash
#62Grocery stores should be worried. Amazon is predator that will take on any market it thinks it can win. Pretty soon they will not only be competing against the store next door, but the Amazon grocery warehouse with all the advantages of scale and convenience.
Re: Amazon Dash
#63I wonder if this will lead to showrooming of groceries, like Amazon's done with books. The only thing preventing this is the wifi requirement, but of course one can already do this with their phone. Though it does make it even easier.
I'm not sure that would help them. Amazon Fresh doesn't have a great record for beating grocery store pricing. See http://www.cnet.com/news/amazonfresh-vs-supermarket-a-hands-... which matches my personal experience when I've compared baskets of products my family commonly purchases. I will say when we used it, the produce quality was very good which was one of my concerns. Seems like they went above and beyond to ad…
Considering that Grocery Gateway (services parts of metropolitan Toronto; has a website and mobile app; is owned by a nationwide premium grocery store chain in the country) charges $10/order, you'd make it up if you ordered groceries every week.
If you don't order that often, the margins probably aren't high enough that Amazon can afford to service you.
Re: Amazon Dash
#64HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we (geeks) don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role. We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy ("My phone can already snap a barcode, I don't need a sepa…
> Ultimately we shouldn't assume consumers value convergence, especially when it creates ever increasing complexity in user experience
Reminds me of this excellent article by Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
Making everything an app narrows the bandwidth between the user and the tool. Now everyone needs a phone, and you can't leave the scanner where it gets used, and you have to go through the generalized touch interface to get to the functionality instead of (and this is a valid UI) just picking up the scanner.
Re: Amazon Dash
#65Why is Amazon gold plating their fresh service when they didn't manage to meaningfully expand it since 2007?
Even if they hadn't expanded beyond Seattle, Seattle is their "home market" where lots of their employees live and a rather good market for a wide-availability grocer. Fred Meyer stores nor its QFC sibling hold a candle to any halfway-decent actual-Kroger from back home. Safeway is just Tom Thumb with a 20% markup. This isn't exactly the Dallas/Fort Worth grocery region, with 11 (yes, eleven) full-service grocery chains. Besides, having innovation on a local scale probably matters as much to Amazon as innovation on a national scale because it gets them shopping data and a "test platform" that can serve as the basis for expansion.
Re: Amazon Dash
#66I see absolutely no reason why this couldn't have been a mobile app with a bar code scanner and voice recognition...
Probably because nobody wants to use mobile apps with bar code scanners. Related: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
Which is the conventional wisdom (no one scans anything) but its not actually correct. I've done some QR tests which have picked up hits (not huge mind you but non-zero). There was also the story of the guy[1], on Sharktank, where one of his props was a QR code and he picked up customers who scanned it (from their TV) while watching the show.
It isn't common, that is for sure. And the bar code folks don't make it easy for folks. Simply publishing the bar code database would be a huge 'win' for barcode adoption.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/how-a-startup-accidentally-...
Re: Amazon Dash
#67HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we (geeks) don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role. We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy ("My phone can already snap a barcode, I don't need a sepa…
To some extent, though. When I'm home, my mother gets extremely frustrated (still!) that there isn't one remote that does everything.
Re: Amazon Dash
#68How does the voice feature work? Is it computer voice recognition, or does your voice get sent to a person to interpret?
Re: Amazon Dash
#69HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we (geeks) don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role. We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy ("My phone can already snap a barcode, I don't need a sepa…
Agreed. Other advantages:
A dedicated device means everyone in the household can use it without the friction of having to help everyone find the app and register with the same account.
People without phones (like kids) can use it.
It's designed to sit on the kitchen counter or hooked on to something. That physical presence reminds you to use it when you're in the kitchen, where an app buried on the last page of the home screen is easy to forget.
The camera-based barcode scanners like the one built into the Amazon mobile app are significantly more difficult to use than laser scanners. In a grocery shopping context, shoppers will purchase dozens of different products and every bit of additional frustration and delay matters.
One issue with the website: the hero image is really bad. The background is blurred out so there's no context and there are no other objects in the frame so I have no sense of scale. If there was like an apple next to it or something, and you could see it was in a kitchen, that would be so much better.
Re: Amazon Dash
#70Number of steps to scan grocery by phone: 1. Find your phone 2. Unlock 3. Swipe left to home page three or maybe four 4. Visually scan for the AmazonFresh icon and tap 5. Wait for loading 6. Start scanning action 7. Confirm and pay Number of steps to scan grocery by Dash: 1. Get device from drawer or pantry 2. Press one button and scan 3. Confirm and pay For the target demo (30+, married, households with children), o…
It's also why I continue to wear a watch despite carrying a cell phone.
Exactly, that is an excellent analogy.