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Amazon Prime was a brilliant move. Get people to pay what is probably less then the average user's shipping costs for a year and then they'll refuse to buy prod
by ryandvm 15y ago
Amazon Prime was a brilliant move. Get people to pay what is probably less then the average user's shipping costs for a year and then they'll refuse to buy products from anyone but you. And now it turns out they'll even go as far as ignoring pricing to quell cognitive dissonance. Nice.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 15y agoIMO It's hardly about cognitive dissonance; rather, people don't like to shop around on every damn thing they buy. So, once you position yourself in customer's minds as reliably having competitive pricing (not always the #1 cheapest, but always close) they feel comfortable ordering from you without shopping around.
- jrockway 15y agoI buy Amazon because of the certainty. Item doesn't arrive? "Very sorry, we've overnighted another one." Item is wrong? "Sorry, here's your money back, and keep the item." Item doesn't fit? "Here's a mailing label to send it back." And so on. The consistency of service is why Amazon is good to buy from. You order something and you know you'll have it in 2 days or less.
- ww520 15y agoIt is a brilliant use of a simple psychology concept - Sunken Cost. People tend to go further to justify the sunken cost. The Prime members become Amazon's captive audiences. Same thing with the Costco/SamsClub members.
- gwern 15y agoOr it could be due to the mental burden of account-keeping and search, and increases in purchases a perfectly rational reaction to lowered costs. (Sunk cost, you say? Believe me, I know about sunk cost, and sunk cost is vastly over-invoked and probably a minimal problem in individual human psychology: http://www.gwern.net/Sunk%20cost http://www.gwern.net/Sunk%20cost )