Amazon this morning announced an expansion of its Dash Buttons product line – those Wi-Fi connected, push-button devices that let you buy products from its site with just a press. One year after the buttons went live, and apparently not the April Fool’s joke people once imagined, Amazon says it now has over 100 buttons available, and orders have increased by more than 75 percent in the last three months.
The expansion includes roughly 80 more brands joining the previous line-up, including several now in the food and drink space, as opposed to consumer packaged goods (CPG).
Of course, Amazon being Amazon, the company declined to offer any real numbers regarding these buttons’ performance and their contribution to Amazon’s bottom line. It’s unclear how many customers have bought the buttons, how many are in the wild being used, or what they deliver in terms of sales, among other things.
Still, those who own buttons appear to be active users – Amazon says that Dash Button orders occur, on average, more than once per minute.
Initially, the devices were used to re-order common household items, like paper towels, laundry detergent, toilet paper, trash bags, dog food, diapers, and more. But in the year since their debut, Dash Buttons have rolled out for a variety of products – including, as of today, those you wouldn’t think require the convenience of push-button ordering, like gum, or food and drink products like Red Bull and Slim Jim. (Coders, maybe?)
You can even push a button to re-order condoms, if you like.
Today, the online retailer says it has tripled the available brands available in the program, which is only available to Prime members. There are now over 100 buttons to choose from, including new brand additions such as Brawny, Charmin, Clorox, Doritos, Energizer, Gain, Honest Kids, L’Oreal Paris Revitalift, Lysol, Peet’s Coffee, Playtex, Purina, Red Bull, Seventh Generation, Slim Jim, Snuggle, Starbucks, Trojan, Vitamin Water, and others.
Effectively, every CPG company wants to have its products available via Dash Button, it seems.
Since Amazon isn’t offering any true insight into how the devices are performing, we can only look to third-party data to come to any conclusions.
Earlier this month, a study from 1010data’s Ecom Insights Panel, which consists of millions of online shoppers in the U.S., revealed that the top-selling individual Dash Buttons were those for two P&G products, Tide Pods and the Powder Dash Button (both tied for #1); with P&G’s Bounty Dash Button at #2; followed by Kimberly Clark’s Cottonelle Dash Button at #3.
The data was collected from May 2015 through January 2016, the company said.
P&G, in fact, rules the Dash Button market, the study indicated, taking the lion’s share of sales at 31 percent. After P&G, Kimberly Clark (Cottonelle, Huggies) sits at #2 with 14 percent of the market share, and Clorox (Glad) rounds out the top three with 11.7 percent.
The study also found that the other companies in the top 10 included PepsiCo, SC Johnson, Kraft Heinz, Reckitt Benckiser, Amazon, Coca-Cola and Wellness.
Though you have to pony up $4.99 to buy a Dash Button, the buttons themselves end up being effectively free. With your first order, Amazon credits your account $4.99.
That wasn’t always the case – at launch, Amazon charged customers for the buttons, which seemed a little ridiculous. Spend money in order to more easily shop at Amazon, and therefore, give them money? Amazon soon realized that getting the buttons into the hands of shoppers was worth the $5 in the long run, apparently.
If you’re wondering what it’s like to use a Dash Button, you can check out our guide here.
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