Stephen Baker, senior writer at BusinessWeek , spoke to richrelevance’s Chief Scientist Darren Vengroff this week for a piece in his BusinessWeek blog, Blogspotting .
“There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.” – Archibald MacLeish
This quote aptly describes my objective in writing my most recent article—“Lessons Learned From Amazon”—about my experiences as Amazon.com’s head of data mining and personalization. It was great to review and articulate some of the main learnings I came out of Amazon with. What were some of our best decisions? Worst? What we did we learn? The wisdom I obtained from the experience—the good, the bad, and even the ugly—has been invaluable and truly applies to all etailors no matter the size.
MultiChannel Merchant published the article this past week. I’ve included the full text below.
Richard MacManus published a post on ReadWriteWeb on Monday (which was re-published in the NYTimes) titled “A Guide to Recommender Systems;” this post is a reply.
I’m excited to see a conversation around recommender systems that delves deeper into the different approaches to recommending products. There are some folks who follow the misconception that all recommendation engines are created equal—they most definitely are not. Although Richard’s analysis may have oversimplified the problem in identifying only four approaches to recommendations (personalized, social, item, and combination), he does affirm the critical point that there are very different ways to derive high-quality recommendations.
“As retailers head into what looks to be one of the most challenging holiday seasons on record, many have high hopes that top sellers will drive sales. But promoting “mega trends” like the Tickle Me Elmo or iPod of past holiday seasons won’t necessarily be the best way to drive sales this year, as many cash-strapped consumers forgo big-ticket items for smaller, less expensive gifts. Instead, retailers should take advantage of the technology tools available to them to hone in on the “micro trends” of the season.”
Online consumers are increasingly being bombarded with new sources of information, from Internet news outlets and email, to blogs, instant messages, podcasts, YouTube videos, text messages, and viral marketing campaigns. Information now moves so quickly and freely that the buying patterns of entire populations can change in a matter of hours. That’s why online retailers need to “merchandise to the minute” by offering relevant, personalized product recommendations to each and every consumer in real time.