Retailing Today just published an article I wrote. In summary, I address how second-generation product recommendations compare to the first-generation in terms of performance, multichannel potential, and personalization quality. The full article is available here. Hope you find helpful!
Driving sales in a tough economy
May 4, By David Selinger
The era of abundant consumer spending is over –– and retailers should prepare now for a possible long-term shift in consumers’ values and attitudes. A recent survey of online consumers by JupiterResearch found that nearly half of online shoppers said they planned to reduce spending in 2009. Savvy retailers will quickly adapt their marketing strategies to address the mindset of more hesitant and price-sensitive shoppers. read the article
I am just coming home from a fun and interesting time @ E-Tail 2009. I got to see many of our friends and partners, from the folks at PayPal and Akamai who throw a heck of a party to those folks at Responsys who definitely know how to spice up a lunch with a little “game show”.
Among many interesting speakers, Andrew Kordek, the manager of emerging e-mail technologies at Sears gave a great talk about how critical it is to engage your customer in a meaningful way throughout the “E-mail Lifecycle”. It’s a topic we in retail/e-mail discuss, but few have acted so directly and so markedly.
“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.
We are very fortunate that despite all of the turmoil in the greater market, richrelevance gets to celebrate 2008 as the best year ever.
In fact this past holiday season was awesome. Absolutely awesome.
All of this is due in no uncertain terms to the hard work and dedication of our team—this note a big Thank You to each of you!
“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.”