What does Amazon Dash mean for merchants, brands, advertisers and customers?
Assorted thoughts. Some of which pertain to the near, some to a future farther away.
Brands
- reduced churn rate
- much harder to penetrate customer-brand relationship
- the button is a buying decision for a specific product of a specific brand - different product, different button
Advertising
- to increase sales, brands cannot rely on advertising as they do today
- reward for switching brand needs to be very convincing, customer has to replace a physical* object*
- can you display a price drop via the button?
- customers don’t go into the supermarket and fetch whatever is better displayed, they press a button. see above.
- brands need to reconsider who their customers really are: distributors or you and me at home?
Merchants (or buttoneers. see below.)
- merchant becames invisible - you push a branded button
- merchant becomes omnipresent/part of our lives/room mate, knowing everything a room mate would
- what does merchant do with this kind of data?
Private Transportation
- even less reason to own a car
- even less reason to rent a car to go heavy shopping
Architecture
- goods elevators, the servants’ entrance of the 21st century?
- extra delivery room?
Logistics
- “Press the button five seconds for express delivery”?
- 50 people getting new detergent – is 3.5 tons* still enough?
- I am not really savvy enough in logistics … still:
- even more back injuries?
- larger trucks, more traffic?
- even more trucks?
- hopefully, because logistic companies will need to lower costs, thus more demand for long-lasting power source for trucks. j/k
- “truck lane”?
- …
Etc
- child-proof buttons!
- how could customer identification work w/o or w/ minimal interaction? WiFi specifics?
- where else could you get buttons from? kiosks, cornershops, “vending machines”?
- will supermarkets give away buttons instead of products and receive commission from merchants or brands?
- are buttons middleware? who will run them, buttoneers?
Outlook**
- coolers ain’t so smart because our technology lacks intelligence. Tech can count and do basic calculus, but it cannot decide whether to order new detergent. with the data buttoneers collect while mimicking a very clean and quiet room mate, can we evolve our alogrithms so we can trust them enough to take informed decisions?
*) 3.5 tons is the max cargo a run-off-the-mill transporter used by DHL, UPS etc. can carry when fully loaded. at least in germany. ymmv.
**) did anyone spot the word “privacy” here?