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I don't really get the appeal of voice prompted ordering. Is there really a big enough market of people for whom this is more than a novelty? For many products

• condescendence 10y ago
  It would be cool if they could integrate it with a service like peapod (grocery shopping brought to your door). "Alexa, add to list x" and eventually "alexa order list x" Other than that is pretty much novelty like you said.
  • yo-code-sucks 10y ago
    It does this already.
  • glitch003 10y ago
    Or, say, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime Pantry? (Both deliver products similar to peapod)
    • dunham 10y ago
      Also, "Amazon Now" - Amazon has a few overlapping services for this sort of thing.
• gkoberger 10y ago
  Well, Alexa will only actually buy something if you've already purchased it (EDIT: Seems this isn't true anymore!). The use-case of this is something lie "Alexa, buy more toilet paper" or "Alexa, we're out of salt." Saying it from across the room while cooking is much easier than washing your hands, grabbing your phone, loading the app, searching for the product, and hitting "buy". It's definitely meant more as a replacement for a shopping list than it is a way to, say, do your Christmas shopping.
  • pranjalv123 10y ago
    Really? For me it will order whatever I ask for (it'll report the first result of the search, tell me the price, and ask if I want it).
    • TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      How about a pony?
      • adventurer 10y ago
        No, a pony will take a nice trot up to you and politely ask if you know what you're ordering.
        • navs 10y ago
          Unless you've ordered a pony before in which case it'll be happy to have the company.
    • shostack 10y ago
      And this is the reason I'll never use that feature. The quality of many top Amazon results is often not accurately portrayed with all the fake comments, swapped products, etc. plus, with the various seller and shipping options, I frankly don't trust Amazon to pick the best product and options for me.
      • pranjalv123 10y ago
        For some things, sure. But if I just want batteries or something? It's fine, and saves me some time.
        • shostack 10y ago
          Funny you use that example. There's actually a lot of issues depending on what batteries you buy as some sellers swap in expired batteries, or off-brand replacements. It was so hard to find a certain battery I needed once that was legit, that I just ended up going to my hardware store and getting whatever namebrand they had.
• blazespin 10y ago
  As you get used to and comfortable talking to your alexa, you find that you actually start doing it for a lot of things. It's also a great way to practice your speaking ability. Really trains your enunciation. Amazon needs to develop a biz model for skills that makes sense though.
  • wildpeaks 10y ago
    In a way, it's (probably unintentionally) training its human to use a narrower range of voice patterns (which is handy when collecting data to train a network with), similar to how we're more likely to write in sans-serif than cursive now that computers are ubiquitous.
    • mcphage 10y ago
      There was an article on HN a while ago that claimed it was really ball point pens that killed cursive... the writing style and ink viscosity meant that the speed gains from writing cursive were no longer true, and instead it became slower.
• charlieflowers 10y ago
  I think it appeals to Amazon. Precisely because of accidental orders and because they hope it will catch on.
  • mcphage 10y ago
    Amazon has a friendly enough return policy (which they eat the costs for) that I don't think they're banking on accidental orders.
• EpicEng 10y ago
  I use it for protein powder and hair stuff. That's it.
• azinman2 10y ago
  I've used it myself for dish soap and I know people for whom that's the entire reason they bought it.
  • raverbashing 10y ago
    And what's the mark up on that compared to the grocery store? Considering shipping/prime subscription etc
    • Mithaldu 10y ago
      There's Amazon Pantry, which has you adding items to a box, which is only sent when full. Thus the mark-up remains quite low.
    • ghaff 10y ago
      I looked into it a while back. The conclusion I reached was that it might be worth it if driving to the grocery store/Walmart, shopping, and bringing your supplies home was a hassle for some reason. But Walmart tended to be cheaper than even Prime Pantry and you have to be somewhat selective in shopping in Amazon. (You'll find some items are randomly pricing.) In my case, there's a Walmart I can drive to in about 5 minutes so stocking up on paper towels and dishwashing detergent every few months (and/or when I'm at the grocery store anyway) is pretty easy.
  • appleflaxen 10y ago
    key question for amazon: how many doll houses is a person willing to return in order to make their soap purchase easier?
    • adventured 10y ago
      It'd only be a key question if one assumes the technology isn't going to radically improve over the next 5 or 10 years. It's going to. Deploying to consumers and dealing with such problems, learning from how millions of people use something, is a requirement of that process of improvement. It's similar to people questioning the GUI in the very early days of the PC, because working directly with text operating systems was still superior. It was extremely widely argued that GUIs were junk, were never going to catch on, were too slow, too glitchy, didn't add enough value etc - it's an obvious and common failure to look beyond the tip of one's own nose.
• clouddrover 10y ago
  > I don't really get the appeal of voice prompted ordering. I think the goal from Amazon's point of view is to be the middle man in as many transactions as possible and to abstract away the payment from the acquisition of the product or service. The more you can abstract the payment, the more money people will spend. Like with credit cards versus cash: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/your-money/credit-cards-encourages-extra-spending-as-the-cash-habit-fades-away.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/your-money/credit-cards-en... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201001/spending-and-credit-cards https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201001... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/retail-therapy/201306/why-we-overspend-credit https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/retail-therapy/201306/w...
  • usrusr 10y ago
    Amazon's point of view is pretty clear. The question was about why anybody else would want to play along.
    • allover 10y ago
      Convenience. The 'only a couple of clicks/taps' of GGP assumes user wants to fire up their device and go to Amazon. It's undeniably easier to ask Alexa to order it, for repeat orders at least e.g. the dish soap example.
• OJFord 10y ago
  I agree, but I think adding to my basket/list/saved-for-later would be good - I don't have to remember it, and I can check exactly which version I'm buying before I do.
• piker 10y ago
  My father is one of the last generation to be affected by the polio virus. As he is increasing in age, his body is failing, but his mind is sharp. We got him an Echo Dot for Christmas hoping that the ecosystem will build out a feature set on the device that will make his life better as he continues to lose his manual dexterity. My guess is there are a number of similarly situated people who could benefit if this platform delivers on potential. The addressable market may be small, but maybe the voice-recognition front-end is relatively trivial once you have the text API down. (Haven't had much experience with it yet, but optimistic based on his interest in the product.)
  • Retric 10y ago
    You can use most websites in voice only mode with the right software. If he was blind then voice only is more compelling, but he is probably better of with a full PC.
    • piker 10y ago
      Yes, but it seems like Amazon might be interested in removing one of those layers of abstraction and encouraging development of voice-only applications--which is a benefit to him. I'm excited about it.
    • BraveNewCurency 10y ago
      Apples and Oranges. Have you ever seen someone talk to a PC from across the room? Is there any popular PC voice software that is "always on" and doesn't get itself into bad states? ("dragondictate.exe has stopped") I personally have taken 100's of pictures of Windows dialog boxes on giant advertising/airport displays. If people who are paid big bucks to manage a display can't keep it running flawlessly, how will someone who has bad motor skills and bad eyesight? I'm not saying Alexa is more useful than a PC. But I am saying that Alexa is zero maintenance, and a PC is not. It's the same reason Chromebooks outsell laptops -- it's not that they do more than laptops, but what they can do, chromebooks do "better".
      • Retric 10y ago
• Houshalter 10y ago
  There is a theory about "trivial inconvenience s". That every small obstacle you put in the way of something massively decreases user participation. Require a long sign up form on your website and only 10% of people will bother. By removing all friction and letting people order something exactly when they think of it, I suspect they will make many more sales.
  • tbrownaw 10y ago
    But there's also the inherent difficulties like deciding if something fits your budget, or if you have room for it, or which of a set of options you want. I'd expect a tiny reduction in difficulty of ordering something (especially while making it harder to be sure what something you're ordering) wouldn't help much. What I would expect to matter, is how easy the entire process is compared to at other stores. Unless they're just counting on preying on poorly-thought-out impulse buys?
    • dgacmu 10y ago
      If a refill of soap doesn't fit your budget, you probably need to fix your budget. (meaning: it's a predictable recurring expense, so you should be able to roughly factor it in to your budget. There are some for whom this may not be true, but they're probably not wasting money on an echo, either.). I think that's the attraction of focusing on repeat buys. Make it easier to order it from Amazon than to put in your shopping list. (which risks comparison shopping)
• petra 10y ago
  Amazon's end goal is to be the place where a large share of consumers , many who aren't so much cost concious , buy everything. For repeat orders, for small orders, for ordering a taxi, for ordering a repair man, for ordering specific things("i want the same earphones as my friend"), a voice chat may be useful. People don't want to research everything. Or what if Amazon build a voice personality that people really like, and by extention, really enjoy getting help from when buying stuff ? Furthermore, it's a bet. It wasn't so clear, at the advent of mobile, that so much ecommerce will happen there, instead of the big screen. but it did. People changed their habits. It's also not clear with voice, but it's hard to tell.
• perseusprime11 10y ago
  It's great for Amazon because you are not on the web comparing the prices. You will blindly trust Amazon to have the lowest prices and will order stuff.
• syshum 10y ago
  This is one of the reason I have never turned on "One Click Ordering" in Amazon either. I WANT the check out process, I WANT to verify my address, payment method, I want to confirm my order qty, shipping costs, and other items. I am baffled by this trend to simply speak into the air and have a computer order anything with out limit based on what the computer thinks I said.
  • kennethcwilbur 10y ago
    This may interest you. http://lifehacker.com/this-chart-shows-how-computer-literate-most-people-are-1789761598 http://lifehacker.com/this-chart-shows-how-computer-literate...
    • antisthenes 10y ago
      Interesting how polarized Japan is. It has the most users at level 3 proficiency, but almost twice the amount of people who aren't able to use computers at all, compared to, say, USA.
      • xbmcuser 10y ago
        Japan have a larger percentage of older people over 30% are aged 60+ and over 12% are aged 75+ one of the major reasons
  • ClassyJacket 10y ago
    I wish you could do that with eBay, but sadly it seems to be, log out manually every time, or have absolutely no confirmation to order things. Which should be illegal.
  • ghaff 10y ago
    The Dash buttons are the same ting. I'm willing to stipulate that there could exist some item that I order regularly enough to want a dedicated button (but don't want a subscription, which would probably give me a discount) and that Amazon reliably has a good price on it. But I certainly don't have anything that falls in that category.
• conception 10y ago
  It's useful to catch things you need before you forget. Like if your grabbing some advil and take the last two you can just order more and not stop whatever you were doing. It's a total #firstworldstrugs but not entirely without use and value.
  • jghn 10y ago
    This. It's pretty common for me to say for days "oh, I should get more toothpaste today" and then completely forget by the time that I'm in a position to record that somewhere. At some point I say "crap, now I'm out of toothpaste". If I could use voice to add to my list and/or order that wouldn't happen.
    • ghaff 10y ago
      I use Alexa to put stuff on a shopping list all the time. It's probably one of its more useful features for me. But most of this stuff is things I don't get from Amazon and, if I did, I'd want to check quantities, pricing, etc. For certain types of goods you might want to batch things up an use Amazon Pantry.
      • jghn 10y ago
        I've recently set up an Echo but haven't really explored this functionality yet. As you state most things I want I don't actually want to buy from Amazon. I've been looking into other shopping list skills to use. What I really want is something which synchs with a smartphone app I can use when I'm at the store. pre-Echo I've been using Evernote for this. I haven't had a chance to try out any of the alexa enabled things but OurGroceries looks to be about what I want.
        • ghaff 10y ago
          Echo syncs lists to the Alexa app on the smartphone. The voice recognition works quite well and I find it very handy when I'm cooking and notice I'm almost out of something to add it to my list without having to stop what I'm doing.
• abiox 10y ago
  for me the appeal hinges on the quality of being understood and the sophistication of the software. it's fairly binary - if it's natural and fluid, it's pretty cool; if it's too high friction, i completely lose interest.
• rhino369 10y ago
  The only time I used it was when my dog puked and I use the last of the carpet cleaner as I was cleaning. I didn't want to forget. I'd probably use it for common household stuff if I didn't just buy that at the store. But I know a lot of people who buy cleaning supplies, cooking supplies etc on Amazon.