In mid-November, as election post-mortems focused on inflation worries and the holiday shopping season began to pick up steam, Amazon introduced a new storefront.
Known as Amazon Haul, and currently available only on the app and in the United States, it promises “a place to discover even more affordable fashion, home, lifestyle, electronics and other products with ultralow prices.” Everything on the site is $20 or less. One long-sleeved emerald-green stretch velvet minidress is $12.99; opaque purple tights are $3.99; and a cherry-red elastic belt is $1.99.
The offerings all come from third-party sellers and take two or so weeks for delivery, which is presumably the source of some of the price cuts. The more you buy, the cheaper the tab, according to the site: “5% off orders $50 and over, and 10% off orders $75 or more.” And for a limited time, customers get an extra 50 percent off at checkout.
But is this really about savings? Or is it about something more complicated and potentially insidious? Maria Boschetti, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said that the company was simply responding to customer behavior, giving them more of what they wanted. That’s probably true. But it seems that what Amazon thinks customers want isn’t just more money in the bank. It’s the ability to acquire more and more stuff.
At least judging by the name of the new store.
Amazon declined to comment on the inspiration behind the “Haul” moniker, but presumably that’s the whole point of the concept — at least as a defining principle of 21st-century shopping. By naming its new store after the practice, Amazon is simply offering what Ken Pucker, an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, called “truth in advertising.”
Perhaps it is time to actually face what that means.
The term “haul” became popular on YouTube in the early 2000s as a reference to fashion and beauty buying sprees and entered the Urban Dictionary in 2009. Vloggers would share their purchases with their followers, tapping into the growing sense of shopping as vicarious thrill and emotional sustenance.