Amazon brings more products to customer fingertips
Amazon.com is continuing to expand its assortment of Dash buttons.
The e-tail giant is adding more than 50 brands to the program, which lets Amazon Prime members automatically order select items with the press of a button. Prime members will now find a Dash button from brands such as Campbell’s Soup, Cascade, Clif Bar, Dial Liquid HautomTand Soap, FIJI Water, FoodSaver, Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Crackers, Hubert’s Lemonade, Lavazza, Mentos, Nerf, Nutiva, Pay-Doh, Puffs, Quilted Northern, Simplehuman, Trident, V8 Vegetable Juice, and others.
Amazon previously expanded the Dash button assortment to more than 100 buttons in March 2016. The program launched April 1, 2015. New retail categories, including musical equipment and toys, join the program.
During the last three months, Amazon data indicates Dash button order frequency doubled, and is now taking place more than twice a minute. For certain items, such as a pack of eight Bounty paper towels and a 30-ounce canister of Maxwell House ground coffee, more than half of Amazon orders are now made via Dash Button. Also, in the past three months, total Dash Button orders grew by 70%.
“This year we’ve been focused on rapidly growing the Dash button program in every dimension,” said Daniel Rausch, director of Amazon Dash. “In 2015, we had 29 brands on board and today we have more than 150 brands across dozens of retail categories and thousands of products. Customers love the growing selection and are increasingly using Dash Button to skip trips to the store. Dash Button is resonating with Prime members and has become an innovative way for brands to stay connected with their customers, keeping them supplied with products they count on with the simple press of a button.”
Amazon has been busy trying to establish itself as an automatic purchase option in consumers’ homes. The retailer also recently rolled out the first device available with Amazon Dash Replenishment, which enables connected devices to automatically order physical goods from Amazon when supplies are running low. For example, a Brother printer that will order toner or ink when it’s needed.
In addition, the Amazon Echo artificial intelligence device lets Prime members order goods by voice. Echo uses the customer’s order history and can place orders using default payment and shipping settings. If Echo can't find the requested item in the order history, it may suggest an alternate item using Amazon’s Choice, which picks highly-rated Prime-eligible products.
Other companies are also entering the space. Samsung is offering connected appliances, such as the Family Hub connected fridge, that allow direct purchase of online products. And Israeli start-up Kwik is testing its own version of the Dash button. Amazon has a history of being in front of technology trends, and retail may be heading for a future where connected devices are as or more important to e-commerce than Web, mobile or social sites.
Dash buttons are available to Prime members for $4.99 and with the first order through a Dash button, members receive a $4.99 credit to their Amazon account. Customers can receive a notification with every order and can change the product purchased through their Dash button anytime.
For a full list of available brands click here.