Amazon’s Dash button is expanding. Amazon’s UK customers now have access to twice as many of these instant-order buttons, which allow them to re-order specific household products with the flick of a finger.

Arguably, to commit to a single-brand (in fact, single-product) Amazon Dash button, customers must already feel a strong brand loyalty. The Dash button excels at providing instant repeat purchases, but it fails to offer any choice or price competition. Voluntarily opting out of those benefits shows that the customer values convenience above all other aspects of the shopping experience.

Is this the future of shopping? Are we doomed by the Dash to loll around in floating chairs, mindlessly mashing ‘buy’ buttons with our atrophied fists?

No. Harry Selfridge discovered a century ago that consumers love to touch and examine products before buying. With the Amazon Dash, all experiential elements of the process have been stripped away in favour of an essentially thoughtless, automated process. No sampling, no browsing, no touch and feel.

We think that, outside of essential household products, modern consumers want more than just a press-to-pay. We want to build living and changing relationships between customers and brands, allowing customers to influence product development with their preferences, and brands to respond to customers’ input.

So we say thanks, but no thanks. We’ll stick with experience for now. Dash away, dash away, dash away all.

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