731–740 of 871 posts
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"Your baby is crying because it doesn't like the brand of formula you purchase. We recommend Amazon Basics!"
"Your baby is crying because you often raise your voice and make unreasonable demands of those around you. Would you like to add insurance for a lifetime of psychiatric help to your cart?"
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The crazy thing to me is that you’re confused about this. These companies make huge margin fooling consumers who aren’t paying attention. Nearly all the consumers I know are barely conscious, the first promoted link on Amazon is the one they buy. Losing customers like you who actually inspect the listed price is a pittance to the Amazon machine. How much time have you spent in physical stores observing the physically…
It's absurd that you have to become a being of continuous price comparison in order to be considered conscious. This is predatory behaviour loaded with decades of psychological research around manipulation strategies to increase purchases (e.g. price anchoring, physical positioning on shelves, store layout). These things only work because of innate human biases and cognitive defects. The idea that anyone less than a…
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This seems like such a solvable problem. It only requires some profile setup. Take the most commonly re-ordered items on Amazon (paper towels, toothbrushes, etc) and have the user select a preferred product, brand, and fallback for each one, as well as a maximum price. Some of that is already implemented for Subscribe & Save and Whole Foods delivery/pickup orders. They could even leverage that existing system. For le…
What shmuck orders paper towels on the internet?
I have most household items on subscription. It saves a ton of time and costs about the same, maybe a little less for some items. And most importantly, it means I never forget something and then have to make another trip.
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…
If I'm paying up-front, the subscription needs to be an optional add-on that provides additional value. The thing should continue working at some base level for its working lifetime, even if I cancel or the service is shut down.
If the "base level" on the thing I bought is ever changed after my purchase, the company has burned their trust with me. In fact I'll probably switch away and never buy anything from them again.
On the other hand, if they want to build it so a subscription is required to work at all, then I don't want to buy the hardware that I clearly don't actually "own" anyway. It's fair to require paying up-front for a year or two (eg: cell plans) or have a contract requiring a minimum term because obviously the hardware costs something to produce, but in this type of business the product is really the subscription, and the device is just the means of delivery.
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…
And I'm fascinated over and over again on just how bad even that experience sometimes is.
Not finding the right song on Spotify, not understanding what I'm asking, trying to push useless information on me and so on....
In the days of LLMs it looks even worse, because I would expect Alexa to use technology like that to give better answers.
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don't get me wrong, it is silly, but also being able to set a timer without touching anything with your gross cooking hands is unironically a wonderful feature.
Maybe it's because I've worked in food service but if you have "gross cooking hands" you really ought to be washing them before doing anything else. I suppose that a voice-assisted timer could allow you to multi-task so you set it on your way to the sink to wash up, but I don't see how that's a big selling point. At least not for anyone who cooks in a kitchen that I would want to eat food out of. I mean, it's not sol…
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Often or always? Is reading a generic description of a product (menu) seeing the thing? What about alcoholic drinks in pubs or bars “2 pints of your best and a glass of house red”. Alexa may not be great for purchasing from Amazon but this isn’t because humans have never shopped using only their voices. Nor is seeing things required.
People who can see and read almost never use voice-only to shop. Restaurants and catalogs have menus. Street vendors show you their goods. You don't need to take my word for it. No one uses Alexa this way. The proof is in the outcome.
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…
> The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. This is also why Amazon's Dash buttons failed. As an owner of several Echo devices and a former owner of the Dash buttons, my household LOVED the Dash buttons. Never once have we ordered anything via Alexa, nor do we want to. With the button, you selected the EXACT item with a single button. With Alexa, you have to explain what you want, don't necessarily know t…
Hm, but wasn't the price of items ordered through the Dash buttons subject to change, too? Like last week when you set everything up it was $5 per item, but sellers changed and now its $15? Sounds risky to me without checking the order confirmation mails...
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…
And that’s the problem. I’m not shopping with Alexa, because that experience is excruciating. I’m reordering things which I was already going to order through Amazon. They’re not actually generating new sales there; they’re just saving me from having to pull my phone out.
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> It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store Where I live price labels must carry the per liter or the per kilo price too. It's printed with a smaller font size but it's visible and it's often the only price I look at.
The unit price labels here in the US are hilariously messed up. The items you want to compare will be say, a pack of 6 granola bars or a 10 pack. The unit prices will be like: #1: $0.37 / ounce #2: $6.50 / pound or even: #3: $1.82 / each (a price per item) This will even be common within the same exact brand too. The stores seem so bad at picking a consistent unit for a product category that it seems malicious, but i…
(Peanutbutter M&Ms are an egregious example...the share bag price varies 20% depending on the calendar, as does Hilshire Farm Kielbasa...which now comes in 14 oz packages...which is a choice and means a family of 4 needs to buy two of them now to make a meal.)