spiroville.com » Amazon Product Announcement

As anyone who has bought anything or even used Amazon knows, they have an active product announcement program. This is where they notify you of new products via email. Sometimes these are extremely popular items with mass appeal (e.g. Harry Potter) but more frequently they use your history to find items that you would probably be interested in. In my experience, this works very well. I can’t say for sure whether I have bought anything based on their emails but I’m usually interested in the product and will browse to find out more information.

With that said, I was really surprised to receive the following from Amazon.ca: “We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Sergio Leone by Christopher Frayling have also purchased Moments Like This by Donna Hill.”

At this point I’m confused. The cover doesn’t look like something I would usually be interested in. At the bottom of the email it indicates that the book is from the Subjects -> Romance category. Now I know I’m not interested. At all.

Then a funny thing happened. No, I didn’t buy the book! But I did start wondering how this could happen.

Are flocks of huge Sergio Leone fans really buying this book? If so, why? Leone films barely have any female characters let alone actual romance.
Maybe one person who bought Sergio Leone actually bought the book? It could have been a gift?!
Could it be a bug with Amazon’s software?

I’m secretly hoping that it is the third option — the other two options are too damaging to my world view.

Categories: Misc, Movies, Tech
2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Amazon Product Announcement”

Chris W. Rea [UL] wrote a comment on October 8, 2007

I get product announcements from Amazon, too. I agree there are occasionally some wacky recommendations! I think it is your point #2… somebody, somewhere bought both books. It’s probably too easy for a link to be established between items.

What Amazon really needs in such emails is some kind of link such as “Amazon, you’re nuts!” I know I can go into Amazon and remove certain items that I’ve purchased as being used as the *basis* of future recommendations, but I’m not aware there’s any way to flag the recommendation *itself* as the problem, while still leaving the original item active for inference. This “Amazon, you’re nuts!” link idea could feed back into the system generating these recommendations and weaken the link between the two items. Perhaps they could have another button to reinforce it, such as “Amazon, good call!”

Even if there are occasionally some bad recommendations, I have occasionally been sent gems I wouldn’t otherwise find.

Chris W. Rea wrote a comment on October 30, 2007

OK, I just got a crazy one today I thought I’d share:

—
Dear Amazon.ca Customer,

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated “And All That Could Have Been (DVD)” or other films in the Music Video & Concerts > DTS category have also purchased “Legato: The World of the Piano, Vol. 1″ on DVD. For this reason, you might like to know that “Legato: The World of the Piano, Vol. 1″ is now available.
—

Why is this funny? Well, “And All That Could Have Been” is a NINE INCH NAILS concert that I bought. NIN is definitely not classical. While I do like some classical music, it has nothing to do with my liking NIN! (Or does it?!)