Identifying the
Personalization Features in Amazon
Amazon
has pursuing the goal of providing the most customer-oriented experience
to their users, and has been referred as the best practice, or even
the negative example for personalization. Bellow we present some of
the thoughts of Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO:
"If we want to have 20 million
customers, then we want to have 20 million 'stores' ... our mission
is to be the earth's most customer-centric company," Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
CEO [PC World, June 28, 2000 ]
“What's
the ultimate in personalization? When "you go into a bar and sit
down, and the bartender puts a whiskey in front of you without having
to ask what you want," Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO [PC World,
June 28, 2000]
“Amazon.com records what
a shopper purchases and then matches the acquisitions to the aggregate
purchases of other shoppers who have bought similar products, Bezos
said. By comparing what an individual shopper has purchased to what
shoppers with apparently similar tastes have purchased, Amazon.com has
come up with, for example, a "new for you" feature. The features
can suggest, for instance, that based on a certain book purchase, a
shopper might like a certain musical artist on compact disc.’ PC
World, June 28, 2000
“The idea of a merchant
getting to know customers, introducing customers to each other, and
making recommendations is "in a sense, a return to yesterday,"
Bezos said. "In a sense, what technology has taken away from us
is the ability for small-town merchants to make recommendations. But
I think that what technology has taken away, maybe over time, technology
can return." Personalization is Key
for Amazon.com , PC World, 2000
The
site of Amazon.com currently uses two different methods: (a) personalization,
by tracking buyers patterns and behaviors to deliver recommendations
for other books, and (b) customization, by allowing users to
rate different books to further refine recommendations. In using customization,
the goal of Amazon was to correct the misinterpretation of user behavior.
Let's say the user decided to buy a book to a friend. Amazon would base
its recommendation list in your last buys and browse, which not necessarily
reflects the user taste and needs. For user would be annoying to see
in their recommendation list those books that doesn’t match with their
interest. Be able to refine the list and remove items from that would
make users more confident in checking the Amazon suggestions.
The
site uses collaborative filtering method to recommend products to return
visitors based on the purchases of other customers who have bought the
same or similar products.
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Personalization Features
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Goal
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Description
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News for You
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Includes: New Releases’; The Page you Made
[based in the last two options of the user, by buying or clicking],
with options to change or remove.
Movers & Shakers: a list of the last 24 picks
[in the case of Amazon, purchases]
Users Account,
Articles & Interviews
Continuation of the page
New for You buy E-mail: The newest releases. The
latest articles. The hottest recommendations. To find out what's
new for you, subscribe to our semimonthly e-mail.
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Recommendation 7
Recommendation Wizards
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Evaluate with the user if the recommended option
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User specify in a form their favorite Author, Movie, Artist,
Interest, or use some ideas to get start, but in this case doesn’t
offer options for books outside literature: in this case, Amazon
presents “Recommend Like this” option
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Search Explorer
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From the Recommendation page, users get more likely their
choices.
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Similarity Explorer
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Users explore similar items for a product interest from the
Recommendations home page or any product detail page
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New for You
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Friends & Favorites: Add to My Wish List
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Business value: Another way of knowing user intensions.
User value: provide ways to facilitate later
shopping, instead of adding/erase from the shopping chart; make
“birthday list”, “wedding list” etc
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In every product page users have the option to select the
item for wish lists. Also provide Delete, Change quantity, and
Add to my shopping cart. It
is possible to sort by date added or by last updated or price.
It can be viewed by product type.
In addition to that, there is
Friends & Favorites: Find the People you Care About, with
option to search for friends.
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Special Occasion Reminder
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Business value: be connected to the user, and create opportunity for purchase
User value: get organized and be remembered
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It start with Add a Reminder; The user specify kind of occasion;
date; when would like to be reminded; The remind note; also there
are fields related to the other person tastes. Person interests
are defined by keywords, then Amazon display a list for each topic.
It also send you an e-mail with confirmation, and giving you option
to edit or delete.
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Friends & Favorites: Your About You Area
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Business value: stimulate other purchase and
create community
User value: share with other their tastes
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Share information about themselves, their personal tastes,
and opinions regarding various products and services.; users can
add an photo; can be added only for friends (Trustee Friends).
The friend receives an e-mail with a link to the area; there is
guideline to participate, with restrictions, that make Amazon
on control of the content.
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Purchase Circles
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Business value: stimulate
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Highly specialized bestseller lists. They let user know what
people are buying around the world and in their hometown, at your
workplace and at your alma mater.
Individuals and companies can request erase their data from
this circle list.
Amazon group the items sent to particular zip and postal
codes, and the items ordered from each domain name. They then
aggregate this anonymous data and apply an algorithm that constructs
bestseller lists of items that are more popular with each specific
group than with the general population. No personally identifiable
information is used to create Purchase Circle lists, according
to them. It is updated according to the purchase amount: large,
every week; small, every month
Options by organizations, geography, companies, education:
work + live + school
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Share Favorites Area
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Bring new users
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users can share their favorite “stores” and their “favorites
categories”
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E-mail recommendations from editors
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Top Reviews
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The Top Reviewers list is a collection of Amazon.com's leading
customer review writers. Each time a customer reads a review on
the site, he/she gets to vote on whether or not he/she found the
review helpful. The votes are tabulated. And the people whose
reviews are voted most helpful most often are selected as Top
Reviewers. The Top Reviews have their own personal profiles pages,
with links to all reviews they have presented. Their background
and their reviews for the week.
Users can add the Review page to their favorites.
In the list of the top reviews there is a short description
about them, including photo.
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e-Cards
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Users can send e-cards to friends.
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