
Invisible asymptotes - lpolovets
http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2018/5/21/invisible-asymptotes
======
FrozenVoid
>Shipping fees.

>People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even
self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much
of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years.

>People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an
irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was
to show, in the shopping cart and checkout process,

"People hate shipping charges irrationally", because they perceive them as
unfair additional tax that distorts price and makes it harder to compare
prices. If price was including shipping/vat/taxes as single variable no one
would be confused by it. Its not a magic asymptotic limit, its basic
psychology: People want simple interfaces, simpler solutions, simpler
interactions.

~~~
lkrubner
I just got back from Europe. I loved the way that the price of each object was
exactly what I paid. The coffee for 2 euros? It actually cost 2 euros.

Now I am in the USA. I go to buy a large coffee for $2.79 and I end up paying
$3.10. I hate this very much.

~~~
hammock
Well, when you hand over 2 euros that is inclusive of VAT (which if US
resident you are not required to pay/entitled to rebate from the government)
so the cost of a coffee is not really what's shown.

edit: all the downvotes.. want to reply instead?

~~~
lkrubner
I did not downvote you, but I can imagine people are down voting you because
you seem to be making an effort to miss the point. The point is taxes are
included in prices in Europe, but taxes are not included in prices in the USA.

------
phyzome
This is a really interesting look into Amazon's business model around Prime,
market segmentation in social media, and other things.

The author seems to have a deep understanding of how businesses work. Some of
it's pretty gross -- I hate reading about "creating desire", and similar
dystopic capitalist memes -- but it's important to _understand_ what's going
on in these companies.

~~~
luk32
Why the distaste? I treat it as a study of phenomena. It's like a social study
on rather grand scale. It doesn't different species much from the crowd
dynamics, useful in better design of evacuation routes.

The application is not life-saving, but the conclusions are the same. It's
like dynamite and atom splitting. You can use it for the good and for the bad.

> it's important to understand what's going on in these companies.

This is simple. They study people's behavior to drive it for their benefit.
The basics of it should be taught in high school, so people better understand
themselves.

~~~
phyzome
The distaste is from people wanting to "drive demand", doing it, or
recommending it. Driving demand is, quite literally, making possibly-happy
people unhappy and then offering a paid solution. Reducing people's happiness
for profit is basically evil.

And yeah, I'm _reading_ about it because it's important to understand,
anthropologically.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Why the automatic assumption that the people were happy before, and that they
won't be happier after? Have you never been happier/better off after buying
something that you didn't know you wanted?

Driving demand is how some people discover lifelong hobbies.

~~~
phyzome
No, generally when I buy something I didn't know I wanted, I soon feel vaguely
"bleagh" about it and realize I had merely lusted after it, but that it didn't
actually add anything to my life.

Buddhists have this down pat: Desire is suffering.

I think people are pretty capable of finding hobbies on their own. We're
connected to this global information network. It's not like people aren't
being exposed to new ideas all the time. But telling them "you will be happier
if you buy this" is disingenuous, and makes people question their existing
happiness. That's... bad.

I'll tell you one place where it's appropriate, though -- if someone is
already seeking recreation, and doesn't know _which_ option they want,
marketing a specific answer is fine. One of the reasons people love libraries
is that they can go wander around and discover something they'd never heard
of. But that's someone who is already looking for a book to spend time with!
Compare to a banner ad saying "this book will fix your life", when someone was
just trying to look up information on how to fix their mower. They don't need
that. They need to fix their mower.

------
andromeduck
> I'm almost invariably more interested in the folks who've registered
> negative feedback, though I sense many product teams find watching that
> material to be stomach-churning.

YES! I wish more people were comfortable dealing with negative feedback and
not just receiving but also giving or soliciting it. IMO positive and negative
feedback is complementary.

IMO, positive feedback is most useful for reinforcing patterns and trends -
driving surplus by optimizing the current model. Negative feedback is most
useful for generating alpha as it puts emphasis on where the real
friction/desires are, what obstacles lie ahead and therefore what problem to
solve instead of what is the best solution - allowing us to update our
understanding, and break out of a cycle.

~~~
mooreds
I feel the same way about feedback about my personal performance. It's always
nice to hear "you are doing great", but at performance reviews or status
meetings I really want to hear how I am screwing up and (more importantly)
what I need to improve.

Having been on both sides of that conversation, it's really hard to deliver
it, and takes humility to receive. But it's far more valuable.

~~~
kemiller2002
I'm not saying you're wrong, but there is a difference between constructive
feedback and merely negative feedback. Most of what I've seen is feedback with
little understanding of the situation or empathy, and I think that is why
people have become negative about receiving any sort of criticism. I had a
boss that was great at that, and I always got constructive feedback, but those
managers are far and few between. Most of the time I get things like, "The
project is late." without any understanding as to how or why this happened.

~~~
mooreds
> there is a difference between constructive feedback and merely negative
> feedback

That's totally fair, and a great distinction. I will say that learning to ask
for clarification on negative feedback is a good skill to have. Not easy when
you depend on a job for income, for sure.

------
pjc50
> Sometimes, the product-market fit with early adopters is only that. The
> product won't go mainstream because other people don't want or need that
> product.

This is something that SV has a problem with. Every product or company is
assumed to be targeted at the whole world. There's no room for niche products.
Either you take over the world or you end up shut down.

(Twitter is also notoriously bad at handling negative feedback)

~~~
ClassyJacket
Too true. If Vine wasn't popular enough to be kept alive, how the hell many
users did it need?

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iEchoic
This was a great read. I think the other unsaid takeaway here - touched on
briefly when mentioning Twitter's glacial rate of product development - is
that invisible asymptotes become insurmountable if your company has lost the
ability to adapt and execute quickly by time you encounter them.

------
Molaxx
I wonder if this shipping fees asymptote is the reason Amazon never shows me
shipping rates until the last possible moment in the checkout process. That
drives me crazy. They don't even show me if the item ships to my country until
I try to pay for it... Arghhh

------
dmartinez
> Seduction is a gift, and most people in technology vastly overestimate how
> much of customer happiness is solvable by data-driven algorithms while
> underestimating the ROI of seduction.

This is a bit unfair, but keen.

------
AndrewDucker
I really identified with what he said about Twitter. It's a service that
appeals to me, with my love of the firehose of information. Most people just
don't want that - and that's fine.

------
esturk
I know this is an Amazon PR piece but I need to point to their more recent
aggressive behavior of growing revenue at the expense of user experience. My
grips on their non refundable charges is a great example. Amazon will secretly
renew your services without even emailing you and when you go to ask for a
refund on a non agreed upon renewal, they will refuse to issue a refund.

I guess that's one way of overcoming these invisible asymptotes if all they
plan to do is come up with creative ways to charge you.

~~~
Radle
>> Amazon will secretly renew your services without even emailing you and when
you go to ask for a refund on a non agreed upon renewal, they will refuse to
issue a refund.

I got charged by audible over 7 months, told them I wasn't ever interested,
they send me 105$ back.

------
ergodiclife
FYI: For those of you who enjoy articles like these,
[https://stratechery.com/](https://stratechery.com/) might be worth your while
;)

------
ggg9990
Some good stuff in here that risks being glossed over because of the length.
Could use a tl;dr or a 75% reduction in words.

~~~
carlmr
I thought the same. There's an invisble asymptote of the number of people who
will read such a long text.

------
lordnacho
Great article, very long, so I scanned it.

It's interesting when it comes to Twitter, the argument seems to be that
everyone who is gonna use it has come across it, its features are well-known,
and there's not much to be done other than accept that.

Which got me to thinking about cryptocurrencies. This has now been in the news
across the whole planet, everyone has read about it, maybe not everyone really
gets the technical details, but probably the value prop of decentralized
currency has reached a huge number of people now.

Or is it? What do you think?

~~~
Cthulhu_
The ideas are there, but the interface to get on board with cryptocurrencies
are 10x as difficult than e.g. twitter - you have hundreds of currencies (or
half a dozen mainstream ones), hundreds of exchanges for which you need to
provide photo ID, various clients, loads of articles about security, etc.

Whereas Twitter is basically sign up and type a text message.

