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To be fair, Amazon didn't create this. Even supermarkets position products at different height to steer their sales, and the majority of customers grab the laun

To be fair, Amazon didn't create this. Even supermarkets position products at different height to steer their sales, and the majority of customers grab the laundry detergent from the mid-shelf with the most sensational pricing-tag. A specific book is also a far more unique product than i.e. "laundry detergent". To be comparable, you would have to compare laundry detergent to a genre of books, and maybe also the publisher. And then the absurdity of some of Amazon's "Smart Shopping" strategies becomes quite obvious: Is there a market for an Amazon Dash-button that blindly ships i.e. a "fiction book from Penguin publishing"...?

bombcar 2y ago
I wonder how true that is. I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves.
- rickdeckard 2y ago
  > I wonder how true that is. The fact that the middle shelf of a supermarket is usually the first one to be empty is quite compelling evidence. > I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves. Just to validate that assumption: Would you say this is the same for toilet paper? Soap? garbage bags? Sponges? Pencils? cooking-oil? There are lots of commodity items I use where I don't know the brand, I cannot even tell how often I switched the supplier of them in the past year... Subjectively, most people _I_ know buy out of a pool of detergent-brands, all looking quite similar (and most belonging to the same parent company). If they are bombarded with advertisement inside and outside of the shop, and maybe a stacked palette of a different brand of detergent, many of them will "try" this new product instead and end up expanding their pool of brands they will buy.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    For most of the items like toilet paper and paper towels and soap, we have specific brands that we always get the only differences which size seems to be the cheapest to me at the time. The wife is very adamant about those.
    - rickdeckard 2y ago
      This means, at one point in time these specific brands used the same techniques to turn you into their dream customer: A buyer who is loyal to them no matter what competitors and even the retailers are offering.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Your choices are influenced by exposure, and I don’t mean Tuesday. I mean your entire childhood and adolescence as well. How did you decide on that brand, really? And what was your second choice? Even if you narrowed down to three options by pure rationalism the tiebreaker is often emotional. Then we convince ourselves the decision was objective even when it was not.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    At least with TP the choice was blind, as I was buying whatever was cheapest and receiving complaints until I just started trying every brand until a specific one “won out”.

bombcar 2y ago

I wonder how true that is. I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves.

rickdeckard 2y ago
> I wonder how true that is. The fact that the middle shelf of a supermarket is usually the first one to be empty is quite compelling evidence. > I guess it’s your first time buying detergent it might work but most people I know have a specific detergent and they buy the same one no matter where on the shelf it moves. Just to validate that assumption: Would you say this is the same for toilet paper? Soap? garbage bags? Sponges? Pencils? cooking-oil? There are lots of commodity items I use where I don't know the brand, I cannot even tell how often I switched the supplier of them in the past year... Subjectively, most people _I_ know buy out of a pool of detergent-brands, all looking quite similar (and most belonging to the same parent company). If they are bombarded with advertisement inside and outside of the shop, and maybe a stacked palette of a different brand of detergent, many of them will "try" this new product instead and end up expanding their pool of brands they will buy.
- bombcar 2y ago
  For most of the items like toilet paper and paper towels and soap, we have specific brands that we always get the only differences which size seems to be the cheapest to me at the time. The wife is very adamant about those.
  - rickdeckard 2y ago
    This means, at one point in time these specific brands used the same techniques to turn you into their dream customer: A buyer who is loyal to them no matter what competitors and even the retailers are offering.
hinkley 2y ago
Your choices are influenced by exposure, and I don’t mean Tuesday. I mean your entire childhood and adolescence as well. How did you decide on that brand, really? And what was your second choice? Even if you narrowed down to three options by pure rationalism the tiebreaker is often emotional. Then we convince ourselves the decision was objective even when it was not.
- bombcar 2y ago
  At least with TP the choice was blind, as I was buying whatever was cheapest and receiving complaints until I just started trying every brand until a specific one “won out”.