We never do impulse buys for frivolous throwaway consumerism junk but fast ~2 day delivery is still very helpful because... Life Happens ... such as stuff unexpectedly breaking and you want to have a replacement to quickly fix it.

Example of 2 events just in the last month: (1) garage door screw coupler broke. It's the piece that connects the motor shaft to the screw drive. You cannot buy this type of oddball part from Home Depot or Lowes. Amazon had it and delivered it the next day so I was able to repair the door immediately. The alternative of waiting a week+ for slower delivery means the door has to be disengaged from the track so it can be manually raised and lowered. This is not acceptable because I don't have the specific key to the garage locking mechanism from the outside. Why don't I have a key?!? Because life happens. I guess I could manually lock it from the inside and leave the car outside the garage for a week but I didn't like the idea of leaving a catalytic converter exposed to drive-by theft.

(2) was my Skechers work boots had the sole separated from the shoe. I bought the same model shoes from Amazon for $59.99 and had it in 2 days. I could drive to the local Skechers store but they charge $79.99. So either wait a week+ for slow delivery or pay $20 extra plus round trip gas money to buy at the local store.

Amazon quick delivery acts as a JIT (Just In Time) inventory system to take care of unexpected things that happen in life. That's a more sane alternative than holding a bunch of inventory of random parts for things that might go wrong.

Btw, Amazon often offers extra reward points credited to your account if you voluntarily choose slow delivery instead of 2 days. This is what we do the majority of the time. I assume Amazon does this pseudo "cashback" incentive as a way to consolidate as many customer orders as they can to optimize their delivery routes and reduce costs.

Having a predictable delivery date for that on top of it most of the time being way faster than anywhere else is really nice. If I buy some of these somewhere else I might wait weeks for a small part due to logistics issues or low availability compared to Amazon

Not all purchases are things that are just consumable/materialistic. I find most of the time the stuff I buy on Amazon nowadays are things like this, where I want something I need but can't easily get locally or am too busy to go out and get during stores hours.

Purchasing decisions for "this arrives in 2 days" are different than "this may take 2 weeks".

It's the difference between saving me a run to the local big box store or not.

Yeah, but will I be at home when it does? We no longer live in a world where everyone has a nuclear family and the wife is always home while dad is at work. In 2026, only the rich can afford a housewife.

Most of the time I am indeed not in a hurry to receive my purchases. For most items I genuinely could not care less if it arrived tomorrow or two weeks from now. But I do need to know when it will arrive, so that someone is home to receive it.

"A month from now, on a Monday morning" versus "A month from now, on a Tuesday afternoon" makes a huge difference for me, as one of them would result in me having to walk to my front door and the other would result in me having to rent a car and spend an entire afternoon having to go to the other side of the city to pick it up at some warehouse.

90% of the time I choose next-day delivery it is because I know I will be home tomorrow, and the alternative is "some random day next week". If they offered me the option to pick out of a bunch of guaranteed delivery moments next week which are convenient for the seller/shipper, I would!

I'd win because I could remove the late-night impulse buys and de-duplicated things added by multiple family members.

They win because it simplifies shipping logistics/packaging and actually encourages more loose/impulse driven buying ("just add it to the cart, we'll review it later").