Only a Small Percentage of Users Buy Stuff Through Alexa, Report Claims (arstechnica.com) 67
Analysts have been aggressively optimistic in their predictions about the growth of consumer shopping via virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa, but a new report claims that only a small fraction of Alexa device owners shop with voice commands. And most of those who do only try it once or stick to a limited range of products. From a report: Two people who have been briefed on Amazon's "internal figures" told tech business publication The Information that only around 2 percent of people who own Alexa-equipped devices like those in Amazon's Echo line have ever made a purchase with Alexa. Of that 2 percent, about 90 percent tried it once and did not attempt it again after that, one of The Information's sources said. And even those users who regularly use Alexa to shop mainly do so for small purchases like household supplies.
I know two types of Echo owners (Score:5, Interesting)
The first type is the most common - people who bought them because they were cheap and looked like a fun toy. These folks all played with it incessantly for a week or two, then put them away (one such friend told me he isn’t even sure where he put it).
The second type are people like my sister. She set it up and still uses it regularly - but only to play background music in her living room. She’s never used it for anything else and is not interested in learning how to do so (although I did teach her younger son how to get it to fart).
The only people I am aware of ever using the Echo for ordering anything are the guys on TWIT.
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I use it almost every day to turn on a single lamp that didn't have a switch by the door. That is 90% of my use for it other than to sometimes read the news.
I bought a Google Home for the same reason, just because I was tired of constantly having to get up off my desk every time I wanted to turn my light on (and then get back up again to turn it off). I spent $30 on a smart bulb and $30 on the Google Home literally just for that luxury LOL. I also use the Google Home to set countdown timers for tasks like doing chores, and to tell me the time when I'm laying in bed. I don't care for any of its other benefits--but I do dream of an automated Smart Home in the fu
Even Longer Ago Than That: X10 (Score:3)
The Clapper [wikipedia.org] is only two decades old. The X10 System [wikipedia.org] is four decades old and much more useful. It's the original electronic home automation system.
I still use X10 to control more than a dozen lights with timers, day/night detectors, motion sensors, and manual controls. I control a few fail-safe appliances with it too. The modules and controllers are cheap and plentiful, you can still buy them new if you wish. The protocol is completely open and there are myriad computer interfaces. Most Free/free HA so
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The Clapper [wikipedia.org] is only two decades old.
The Clapper can only control one light. Alexa controls lights throughout my house. I can also use it to start my robotic vacuum, unlock the front door, answer questions, give me a news briefing and summarize my schedule while I prepare breakfast.
The X10 System [wikipedia.org] is four decades old and much more useful.
I used X10 back in the 1990s. It was a failure for good reasons. It was hard to setup, difficult to use, and failed often. It also did not respond to voice commands. Alexa is way more capable, and way more popular.
Disclaimer: I have never used Alexa to order
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There is a third type -- those who use their Echos in combination with home control units of various sorts.
If you have home control hardware for things like your entertainment centre, lights, fans, shades, thermostat, etc. being able to control them via a single voice unit is really slick. If you have a complex home entertainment setup, or light switches in dumb places, having your guests learn to ask Alexa to turn things on and off is often much easier for them.
My 70yo mother can't figure out how to turn
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Or you could spend $20 on a universal remote with a macro feature.
I have one. She still found the voice control easier.
Yaz
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Still giving away all your privacy, turning your digital existence into an eSlave for a tiny bit of convenience, is it really worth it. For me, a microphone of camera, not in my home unless it is press to play (I do have a smart phone, it spends it's life in another room, I make calls on it, I do not like to receive calls on it and tend to ignore them, the land line with it's answering machine is for receiving calls, I'm older I used to enjoy driving to and from meetings away from the fucking phone).
Yeah,
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For me, a microphone of camera, not in my home unless it is press to play (I do have a smart phone, it spends it's life in another room
You leak way more useful information through your smartphone than I do through my Echo. My Echo sits in one place. What does it matter that Amazon knows that I turn on my lights at night? Doesn't everyone do that anyway?
You smart phone on the other hand sends a beacon everywhere it goes. You are easily tracked and traced through your phone. Your voice communication isn't encrypted, and your IMEI can be cloned so people can make calls or send texts as if they were you.
I don't own a mobile phone of any s
Oblig? (Score:1)
Objectively worse experience (Score:2)
I have an Echo and use it for lots of random things, but shopping is objectively worse for most products. If I know exactly what I want, like I want to rebuy something consumable like the article talks about, I've used it a time or two. But for browsing or comparing products it's objectively worse than using a computer or even my phone where I can see all the specs/details right there and side by side, tab by tab, or whatever. I don't see myself ever really wanting to use it for more.
Why is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
gEE (Score:1)
It is almost like just creating pathways for people to buy stuff doesn't necessarily mean they will buy anything or change their behavior. It is almost as though we are buying things within our budget and rarely actually need very much stuff.
But then...LES GASP, le horror! That means the only way to stimulate purchasing is to PAY YOUR FUCKING EMPLOYEES PROPERLY. Something amazon knows very little about.
An amazon employee even being able to afford one of their overpriced toys is highly unlikely.
Why do the
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being fired just for getting injured for their miserable safety and employee work conditions
Why can't people provide supporting links?!?? WHY! WHY!
With friends like mine... (Score:3)
The very first thing I did was disable the ability to buy things with my echo. Who knows *what* I'd have ended up with!
obligatory xkcd (Score:4, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/1807/ [xkcd.com]
Not every owner a fool? (Score:2, Interesting)
Further, dash buttons can be a real joke. I might order something th
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Millions of people all over the world are paying with their phones and have been doing so for the past few months/years.
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I'm guessing the OP is younger and still has the mindset "anything new is better and anything old has to be replaced even if it works fine, just because it's old".
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Considering that paper checks still account for over 10 billion payments annually, don't expect voice-based purchases to make a blip on any radar in the next 5-10 years. It was just 6 years ago (2012) that ACH payments overtook paper checks. Even after my parents have died and gone to Heaven there will still be people paying by paper check.
Source: https://www.federalreserve.gov... [federalreserve.gov]
The last time my parent's wanted to buy me something they saw online: they emailed me the homepage of the store (rather than the
Perfectly normal (Score:2)
"And most of those who do only try it once or stick to a limited range of products."
I use it to buy stuff I already know, repeatedly.
Perhaps blind people use it extensively but most of us like to see at least a crappy photograph of the product.
But you can buy detergent from the couch instead of walking to the washing machine and press the dash button.
I can buy stuff at Amazon with Alexa, dash buttons, cellphones, tablets and computers, where else is that possible.
it takes too long (Score:2)
if i buy food online from jet.com or costco it's a few minutes to add stuff to the cart and check out. with alexa i have to tell it to buy stuff one item at a time. and with amazon you have no control of the vendor or the price compared to the website.
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Know why milk is always in the back corner of the grocery store? ... the store owners want you to go all the way through the store, past every aisle, and maybe think "as long as I'm here"...They manipulate you and you don't even realize it.
I realise perfectly well what they are trying to do, and it so annoys me that I'm damned if I will do it. Another example is UK motorway service buildings where you must run the entire zig-zag gauntlet of coffee shops, confectionery stalls, gambling arcades, and tat shops (all over-priced) to reach the toilets. That's why when I stop for a piss I prefer to park in the lorry area which often accesses the place via a back door short cut, or even has a separate lorry drivers' shithouse.
seems to easy to make mistakes via voice (Score:4, Funny)
Alexa: "one Toyota will be parked in your driveway by morning, it will cost 32 thousand dollars"
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And then the lawsuit! http://www.snopes.com/fact-che... [snopes.com]
Hardly surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
I have ordered through the echo but (Score:2)
I have placed three orders using the echo. you really cannot trust amazon to get the product you want at the cheapest price. Too many times I tried but the price was so much higher than if I went to Amazon online and order it from there.
There is also one other issue about ordering through the echo, security! I have it set up to require a pin number before the order will go through. You cannot use the pin when others are around because it would give them access to your credit card and they would be able
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Not only that but a lot of the smaller prime items have gone up in price. Quite often I find now items that are no longer the cheapest or even same price on Amazon as the local "megamart" and usually I don't *have* to have those next-day, I can wait till next week when I'm going anyway.
Voice Systems can't distinguish "Yes" and "No" (Score:3)
My heart sinks when I phone an organisation and it wants me to use voice commands. In my experience they often can't even distinguish between "Yes" and "No". Even when I try loud and exagerated, like " YEEEEES! " and " NOOOOOH! ". Yet I speak with a clear "educated" English accent (and this in the UK). How the hell Scotsmen from Aberdeen or the immigrants who can hardly pronounce English get on I can't imagine.
The most stupid thing was phoning BT (the phone company) to report a faulty line. You have to describe to a robot why you are phoning them, but this was (obviously) over a faulty line with crackles and buzzes going on. I was yelling " FAULTY LINE!! ", and it was saying "I'm sorry, I did not catch that. Did you want to pay your bill?". Idiots, you'd think they would have a special number for line faults and have a person answer; I dumped BT after that shitwreck.
Do some people really try to do shopping like that?
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Do some people really try to do shopping like that?
Voice controlled home units are often significantly better at recognizing and parsing speech than phone menu systems are. For one, requests are processed in the cloud, where the likes of Amazon, Google, and Apple have a lot more processing power than your typical phone tree system does. And secondly, unlike a phone tree system that has to try to understand everybody, a voice control unit like the Echo can be trained specifically for your voice (on the Echo, just say "Alexa, learn my voice" and follow the
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Most people will have no idea what accent you're referring to as the nuances of English accents are opaque to most of us.
It does not matter if they know what I am referring to - my point is that I don't have some edge case accent and therefore the voice recognition ought to be able to handle it.
I think if you heard a variety of UK accents (so including Scottish, Northern Irish, and Welsh, as well as English) you would realise some differences were more than just nuances. Leaving out the immigrants, there are "educated" Scottish (eg Sean Connery), "educated" Welsh (eg Anthony Hopkins), as well as "educated" English (eg Colin
What is actually convenient? (Score:2)
typical hype cycle (Score:2)
liberal spy devices (Score:2)