Amazon is introducing a new Alexa feature that will notify you if an item on your wishlist or in your shopping cart is about to go on sale, the company announced on Thursday. Alexa will now notify users up to 24 hours in advance of a deal going live and then order it on your behalf if you ask it to do so. The feature will also work with items that were marked “saved for later” on the platform. The new feature is now available for Amazon Prime customers in the United States across all newer-generation Echo smart speakers.
You can enable the feature in the Alexa app by navigating to the “Amazon shopping” section from your notifications settings and selecting “shopping recommendations.”
When the feature is enabled, your Amazon Echo ring will turn yellow when an item goes on sale. You can ask Alexa to remind you about the deal when it goes live. You can also say “Alexa, buy it for me” if you want to purchase it. Alexa will then use the default payment and delivery address in your Amazon account to process the purchase. Amazon says that you won’t be charged until your order is successful. Once you place an order, you’ll receive a notification via the Amazon app along with an email confirmation with the order details.
Amazon says the new feature is designed to make daily tasks more convenient and will complement Alexa’s existing shopping tools, such as its Reorder Notifications feature, which notifies you when you may be running low on essentials that you frequently purchase from Amazon.
“Our vision is to make every aspect of your shopping journey simpler and more convenient, and to help you discover savings and save time along the way,” the company said in a blog post about the announcement. “We’re excited to continue innovating in this space and to deliver even more seamless ways for customers to shop with Alexa.”
The launch of the new feature comes as reports have indicated that consumers aren’t adopting voice-based shopping as quickly as expected. While consumers have been happy to bring smart speakers into their home, they continue to use them more often for simple commands — like playing music or getting information, for example — not for making purchases. But, it doesn’t look like Amazon is ready to give up on trying to make voice-based shopping more popular with the launch of this new feature while hinting towards more in the future.
