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What is Amazon's new Dash Button, available today
What is Amazon's new Dash Button, available today

Video: What is Amazon's new Dash Button, available today

Video: What is Amazon's new Dash Button, available today
Video: How do Amazon Dash Buttons Work? 2024, March
Anonim

Amazon has just launched in Italy a new service, it's called Dash Button: is available to customers of its program Prime, in pre-order from today and shipping from November 15th.

Since it looks like nothing else, I can't get by with a comparison to explain it to you: it's not "the Uber of something", so to speak (an expression that applies to 99% of new services).

So be patient: I'll explain it to you in points and then I'll also answer the questions.

First, what is it?

Physically, the Dash Button is a plastic affair with a button. By pressing it, the order of the corresponding product is automatically sent to Amazon, via Wi-Fi connection.

What purpose does it serve?

It allows you to order on the fly the products you use frequently, those that tend to end at the least opportune moment: for example toilet paper, coffee, pet food, razor blades.

For example: according to a research by Gillette, the last blade of a pack is used for twice as long as the others.

This is one of those pieces of information that seem both obvious and yet mind-boggling to me: one of those epiphanies in which we discover that others are just like us - a feeling that, by the way, I thought only great literature offered, and instead product surveys as well. of mass consumption.

One button = one brand = one product.

Ok, once we have established what it is for: is it needed?

Amazon Dash Button
Amazon Dash Button

On the nose, yes.

The management of purchases of this kind of objects is a good psychological watershed: people are generally divided between those who procrastinate until they are forced to cut the toothpaste tube with scissors and rub the toothbrush over it trying to pick up the last molecules (here I am!) and whoever does the stocks, for which he always has rolls of toilet paper stacked according to the Norwegian technique for the Zen accumulation of wood.

But how does it work?

To begin with, you have to buy the Dash Button corresponding to the product - or the products - that you order frequently: each costs 4.99 euros, which are, however, deducted from the amount of the first order, so ultimately it costs zero - if you use it.

To set up the Dash Button, you connect it to Wi-Fi, and with the Amazon app for smartphones you can choose which of the available products of a specific brand to connect to the Dash Button.

The button has a reusable adhesive and a removable hook to hang it, glue it or place it wherever you want - say, the button for the razor next to the bathroom mirror, the one for the cookies in the pantry.

Since it is only available to Prime customers, the conditions are obviously the same: unlimited Prime shipments, at no additional cost. When you place an order, a confirmation notification arrives on your smartphone, with the delivery date and the price.

What if you press it by mistake? As with Amazon 1-Click purchases, there is time to review, modify or cancel the order in a simple way. What if you accidentally press twice? Nothing happens - until the first order has been delivered, the system does not accept any more orders.

What is there in the food sector?

For the moment, still a little bit - but Amazon generally tends to expand the range of products available very quickly. There is Pellini - you can choose between coffee beans, ground for mocha or capsules; there are Barilla and Mulino Bianco and Caffè Vergnano 1882 products.

And for us gourmets?

Nothing for now. But - let's say - while to buy Barilla pasta it would be enough for me to go downstairs, to buy artisan pasta I have to go further, and the Dash Button would be much more convenient for me in this second case.

I was told by Amazon that buttons are also available in the United States for many niche products. Petition!

But then in the future we will have a wall covered with buttons with lights like in Stranger Things?

Amazon Dash Button
Amazon Dash Button

No: the idea is not to turn our apartment into a button room. Amazon estimated that in the US, where the service has been around for a year, people use a few Dash Buttons, say a maximum of five, for items they buy most often - and most often forget to buy.

Of all the corporations that are joyfully discarding our duties as consumers, Amazon is perhaps the one that shows the greatest attention to the usefulness of services - as already demonstrated with Prime Now, for example, which in Milan and its hinterland brings you home spending in an hour.

At the basis there seems to be a rather sophisticated understanding of the psychological mechanisms of our buying behaviors - during the presentation of the Dash Button, the company stressed that "no one wakes up happy at the thought of having to go and buy toilet paper".

Even more interesting is that this service is already born almost obsolete: very soon, the fridge or pantry will know when it is time to do the shopping for us, and it will not even be necessary to press a button anymore.

If it seems futuristic to you, in reality this is already reality for some categories of new generation appliances: washing machines order the detergent themselves, the vacuum cleaner, the bags, the printer, the ink.

Is called Amazon Dash Replenishment and allows device manufacturers to enable their connectivity-enabled products to automatically order items.

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