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Drunk dialing is a thing right? Drunk blogging must be a thing too…. Well in any event that’s what I’m doing.

Amazon Prime is a really interesting thing. I’m going off a trial of it right now. I don’t know how long it lasts, and I don’t really care, but I’m going to keep it. I actually really enjoy having it around because it somehow psychologically allows me to buy things that I really do want, but which I was somehow prevented from buying before. For example, I recently bought “Shadow of the Colosus” for the PS2 and a Castelvania game for the DS. Buying these games before would have meant figuring out the relative cost advantage of forgoeing tax on the Amazon purchase vs. forgoeing shipping costs if I drove down to game stop. That would have lead to a paralysis of decision making which, ultimately, relsults in me not buying the thing that I actually want to have.

Now however the shipping is taken out. Not only is the shipping free, but I get it in two days. I I order a product on the Sunday that it occurs to me that I’d like to own it, I’ll get it on Wednesday. This is a powerful incentive to me. I get the generally lower Amazon price, I don’t have to pay sales tax, and I get relatively speedy shipping for free. All this combined changes the cost dynamic of Amazon Prime for me. I thought about it before as being a simple one to on erelationship of how much I spend in shipping vs. how much Amazon Prime costs (approx. $90 per year). Now however I need to factor in the effect of simply having the service available, and the fact that it allows me to impulse buy things that I actually want at a reduced price.

One can argue how this merely endorses base consumerism and how I’m gathering a sense of self worth by simple material posessions, but I say bollocks to all of that. By the Gods I want to play the new Castlevania game, and it’s worth $30 for me to do so. Now I’ll save $5 off of retail, plus sales tax, and it will be shipped for free in two business days. That’s an awfully compelling argument for me to go ahead and order it. In short Amazon has gotten a sale they probably wouldn’t have otheriwse recieved and they’ve gotten the money for Amazon Prime. Somebody, at least as far as how they’ve affected my buying habits, has been very clever in formulating this idea.