I read somewhere that it was a way to get you into the habit of going directly to Amazon rather than searching for the product on Google and then clicking the f

I read somewhere that it was a way to get you into the habit of going directly to Amazon rather than searching for the product on Google and then clicking the first retailer. That's why you had to type smile.amazon.com directly into your browser. So in that way, it earned them a huge amount of customer loyalty.