Amazon's Dash Button Will Make You a Worse Shopper

Amazon announced, on the day before April Fool's Day, that it would provide free "Dash Buttons" to Amazon Prime members, allowing users to automatically reorder items at the push of a button that's mounted on the product itself in the member's home.

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Why the Dash Button Could Lead to Overspending

The Amazon Dash Button is available for select household goods — think laundry detergent, paper towels, coffee canisters, etc. The problem is, as far as commercials show thus far, it's only for select brands. Need diapers? Huggies is your option. Detergent running low? You can order more Tide through your Dash Button. If this early criticism is true, the Dash Button could be limiting, removing the opportunity to, when low on a product, evaluate which brand is best — either based on quality or price.

Companies that gain access to their own Dash Buttons will increase their valuable access to Amazon's Prime customers — of which, there could be as many as 50 million, according to Re/code.

Others argue the Dash Button is an attempt to "make us stupid," and say the product is one more move by Amazon to pervasively overstep its boundaries. From Amazon's "Echo," which listens to your household conversations for cues you'd like to purchase merchandise, to the fact that a drone could eventually be delivering your next Dash Button order of Gatorade, Amazon has a clear goal of ensuring its customers not only purchase the same goods, but do so exclusively from Amazon.

The chance to walk down a shopping aisle, comparing physical products and their prices, is being supplanted by technology that could make us much less mindful with our money.

It'll take time to see whether consumers react the same way as critics have, or whether the opportunity to reorder items at the push of a physical button is convenient enough to adopt.

Keep reading: 5 Ways to Get Out of Paying for Amazon Shipping

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