Amazon has rolled out its Dash button devices to UK Prime customers today, but how much of an impact has the technology made Stateside?
Dash takes the form of a physical button device – priced at £4.99 in the UK, although this amount is deducted from the shopper’s first order – that is linked to a specific branded products such as Andrex toilet roll or Whiskas cat food.
Shoppers simply push the button to re-order items when they are running low.
The device was first launched for Prime Shoppers in the US a year ago with 29 brand partners, a number that has since swelled to more than 150, including Play-Doh, Red Bull and Doritos.
Hopes dashed
An Andrex-branded toilet roll button or Ariel-branded washing liquid button will clearly be popular with FMCG brands, giving them an opportunity to monopolise customer loyalty. However, does the shopper really benefit?
Planet Retail’s head of global technology Miya Knights remains sceptical.
“Industry insiders have raised eyebrows over whether a button that only offers shoppers access to a single product at a time is the most forward-thinking way for customers to shop”
“The technology itself is a gimmick,” she says. “The brands and Amazon itself stand to gain more from this than the consumers will.”
In fact, market research firm Slice Intelligence found in June this year that fewer than half of the US customers with Dash Buttons had placed a single order via the one-touch shopping system.
Amazon is notoriously reticent about revealing sales figures. However, the online giant has provided some context to indicate that Dash has gained traction in the US,
The etailer said that orders of Dash buttons in the country have increased threefold over the last two months, and orders using the devices are placed at a rate of over twice per minute.
Furthermore, the number of brands available for Dash reordering has grown four times faster this year than in 2015.
However, it remains unclear whether shoppers are truly embracing Amazon’s new ordering technique.
“Anecdotally, we are hearing that customers that have bought the buttons and use them don’t do so more than once or twice, after which they just sit round their houses cluttering them up,” say Knights.
Primed for loyalty
Amazon Dash director Daniel Rausch told Retail Week that US shoppers who use Dash buttons increasingly have several dotted around their home – one in a bathroom cabinet to order new razors and another in the kitchen to buy fresh coffee, for example.
“Arguably the most significant benefit that Dash will reap for Amazon is adding another string to its Prime bow”
However, industry insiders have raised eyebrows over whether a button that only offers shoppers access to a single product at a time is the most forward-thinking way for customers to shop.
When compared with Amazon Echo, a set of speakers that operates via voice commands through which customers can order products, Knights argues that Dash is a significantly less innovative option.
“Amazon’s website already has one-click and subscribe and save capabilities so at the most basic level you can already do some kind of auto-replenishment, and at the most advanced end you’ve got Echo, which could easily incorporate the same auto-replenishment functionality at the prompt of a voice command,” says Knights.
“In the middle you’ve got this Dash button. It doesn’t give you the basic functionality that you already get from the website and it doesn’t give you anything above and beyond what can be included in Amazon Echo.”
Arguably the most significant benefit that Dash will reap for Amazon is adding another string to its Prime bow.
“What Dash does do is gain [Amazon] column inches and, potentially in the eyes of consumers make Amazon Prime a bit more sticky,” says Knights.
The online retailer has rolled out a raft of benefits to atrract new Prime Shoppers in recent months, from exclusive discounts on Prime Day to boosting its food offer through Pantry and Fresh.
As shoppers turn to the etail giant for a quick and easy shopping experience across ever more sectors, Dash is another way – albeit not the most innovative – to bolster Amazon’s convenience credentials.
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