Actually, it's upselling.
"would you like fries with that?"
"do you need a case for the camera?"
"do you need brushes with the makeup powder?"
and the most evil of all: "would you like an extended warranty?"
In situations 1, 2 and 3, we (merchants) are doing our customer a service -- pointing out there are accessories that are suitable for the product that they may want, and we just happen to have an expertly paired solution, right here, right now.
cross-selling (to me) means selling something else, once the customer is in the store (customers also bought)
Terminology aside, we can call it anything we want -- but the ability for a merchant to help a customer find exactly what they want is our job. If my customer buys a makeup item and I don't ask her if she has the appropriate brush makes me a poor service provider. Of course, she may already have one - but maybe not.
Mike - your suggestion to turn off the BUY NOW pref makes no difference in the Add To Cart pop-up (try it). Pref On or OFF it still simply adds item to cart without option selection. This is TERRIBLY dangerous for the merchant since it guarantees the wrong item will be in the cart. Returns. Bad.
I don't see merchandising as a fishing trip. I'm trying to help my customers find what they need. I have countless orders where my customer comes in for one item and leaves with a dozen. That's not fishing!
Adding the product options to the category page (same code, right?) is a major undertaking that I don't want to do. There is another option:
http://www.websitecm.com/x-cart-mods/ezupsell.html
I own this, use it on my 4.1.x store and can upgrade it to 4.5.x for cab fare. I think I may have to use EZ-up and not the sexy pop-up (unless I can put EZ-up into a js box - of course I can - do i want to? maybe.)
Part of the attraction for gold plus was the add to cart popup. But it's not ready for prime time if your store relies on options. And based on the response from Alexander, I think it's a long time coming before this feature is added -- so I will turn it off and install EZ-up. Simple. Happy.
I hope x-cart leadership understands why this missing functionality is a bug, and makes the add to cart popup worthless to the store with product options.
Moving on...
J