Amazon’s New Dash Wand May Step Up Its Grocery Presence

June 30, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

Amazon’s push for the grocery market just got a lot more pronounced, as it rolled out its new Dash Wand with Alexa support. This technological chimera means a powerful new tool in Amazon’s push to control the online grocery market, from some fairly simple origins.

With the new Dash Wand, users get access to a device that affixes to the standard household refrigerator, and provides a means to scan grocery barcodes to reorder current stock. The new Alexa connection, meanwhile, adds voice controls to the mix, effectively allowing a user to tell the fridge that they’re out of milk, and for milk to be promptly reordered through the Dash Wand on the fridge.

Plus, the new Dash Wand system allows users to proceed to checkout without having to log onto a computer, a development that’s actually a step up from earlier Dash Wand versions that required such measures. There’s even an additional educational component, as Dash Wand can convert measurements, and look up restaurants and nutritional information, along with recipes.

Given that the Dash Wand itself sells for $20, and after rebates is effectively free for Amazon Prime members, the end result is an easy way for users to get into the field and put it to use first-hand. Throw in a 90 day trial of AmazonFresh at no further charge and Amazon likely has all it needs to get users hooked on this particular method of ordering groceries.

Perhaps the only real downside is its overall reach. Right now, AmazonFresh isn’t exactly in wide use, and likely won’t be for some time to come. While this new Dash Wand system will go quite a ways toward establishing its reach in those regions—and some assert that the Whole Foods acquisition will give AmazonFresh a whole new base of operations from which to work—it’s still going to be quite some time before AmazonFresh can be the grocery ordering system of choice for much of the country.

 

Still, it must start somewhere, and Amazon’s new capability may be just the kickstart it needs to bring together a terrific user interface and the support structure to keep it all going.