By
Chimamanda U. Martha
March 11th, 2024
Trying to automate shopping via the Internet of Things, Amazon announces Dash Button, a controller which allows customers to order products with one click.
On Tuesday, Amazon introduced a product that seemed a hoax. It’s dubbed Dash Button. Actually, it’s a small plastic tool with a product logo on it. So, just push the button, and you’ll have a product delivered straight to your door.
According to the video launched along with Amazon’s announcement, such products as Gatorade, Tide detergent, Kraft mac and cheese, Glad trash bags, Cottonelle toilet paper, Olay moisturizer, Gillette razors, Huggies diapers, Old Mother Hubbard dog treats, Clorox Wipes, and some other brands will appear on Amazon’s buttons. Surely, Amazon expects that its customers are going to place Dash Buttons around their homes—in their pantry, bathroom, and kitchen.
“Some people will think buttons will be a silly idea, and it is a silly idea to think we will have houses full of buttons,” said Kinley Pearsall, an Amazon spokeswoman. But, she also adds that the brand-new tool will be quite useful for those products that customers use regularly.
“You see the Tide button, you know it’s for Tide and the same amount you buy every time shows up on your doorstep two days later,” Pearsall said. “But the real long-term goal is that you never have to worry about hitting that button,” reports WSJ.
To get a set of buttons, Amazon customers need to ask for an invite into the program. If the company accepts the request, it’ll provide buttons at no added cost.
Once you have your Dash buttons at home, you can fit them into a plastic clip or mount with an adhesive strip on the back. The buttons need to be set via the Amazon mobile shopping app, connected to Wi-Fi network and assigned the products and the quantities. After pushing the button, you receive a smartphone notification. The order can be deleted within 30 minutes.
Still, Amazon didn’t announce, whether the retailer and its hardware partners will provide buttond just for certain brands of products. The copany says the button itself will help inform some of the decisions going forward, reads WSJ.
“Our goal with the Dash Button is to learn as much as possible about what customers think about this,” Pearsall said. Whether people will want to stick tiny, Wi-Fi connected product logos around their homes remains to be seen.
Really, the whole idea is crazy. In any case, Amazon is trying to automate shopping via the Internet of Things, and Dash Button is just the beginning.