Ben Sprecher

Retail TouchPoints: New Research Shows Online Shoppers Expect Personalized Merchandising

July 6, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
According to new research, more than 50 percent of consumers expect personalized merchandising, starting with a personalized home page, while one in four look for these tailored experiences at the search results, product, and category pages. When, where and how should personalized merchandising become part of the online shopping experience?      [more...]

Amazon.com is probably the best known practitioner of "people who bought X also liked Y" marketing (AKA, personalized merchandising). This type of automated recommendation, often called "collaborative filtering," can be remarkably effective. Anecdotally, Amazon recently suggested I'd like to read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis, since I liked "Liar's Poker" and "When Genius Failed," and I immediately added it to my wish list.

Netflix is also famous for using the accumulated preferences of its users to help it do a better job recommending new movies that a particular member might like.

This type of recommendation marketing is, if anything, under-utilized today. I'd like to see more retailers, both online and off, leverage the "network of preferences" that their purchase history database represents to help shoppers find out about new products and encourage additional purchases.