Invisible asymptotes
>Shipping fees.<p>>People hate paying for shipping. They despise it. It may sound banal, even self-evident, but understanding that was, I'm convinced, so critical to much of how we unlocked growth at Amazon over the years.<p>>People don't just hate paying for shipping, they hate it to literally an irrational degree. We know this because our first attempt to address this was to show, in the shopping cart and checkout process,<p>"People hate shipping charges irrationally", because they perceive them as unfair additional tax that distorts price and makes it harder to compare prices.
If price was including shipping/vat/taxes as single variable no one would be confused by it.
Its not a magic asymptotic limit, its basic psychology:
People want simple interfaces, simpler solutions, simpler interactions.