Techdirt has a little article talking about how people prefer free shipping over price discounts, even thought the final price may be higher. I don’t find that so hard to understand – free shipping offers flexibility in that you don’t feel you need to bunch orders together, enables price comparisons with local stored directly, and just makes life easier. The cost of processing may go down, but human information processing – actually having to figure out what the total price might be – becomes relatively more expensive. Free shipping is worth more because it simplifies your life and your shopping.

That’s all.