Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I already don't like the way Amazon in particular tries to track my search habits and recommend books for me--it rarely finds anything of interest to me.
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I share your observations. Amazon does track searches, as well as sales, and as you point out, just doesn't do a very good job of it, as the recommendations are just not that good. It particularly confuses purchases for others with what I want, so gets awful around Christmas. Even when I ship it elsewhere and mark it a gift!? But I find the same tracking at B&N in the store, local grocery and drug stores, based off of customer cards and/or credit cards. So I don't see Amazon as inherently bad, just not very good at the tracking. And it's maybe your last line: "
-it rarely finds anything of interest to me." that's maybe the most cogent. I suspect that the tracking was really good, and the suggestions applicable, a lot of our complaints would melt away. The beauty of the old book store run by a Mom and Pop is that they learned to know their customers, would always keep an eye out for a new book by an author you liked, or a hot book in your favorite genre, and wouldn't get confused if you bought "The Life and Times of Barbie!" for a niece around Christmas. That was always an invasion of privacy in a way, same as a shoe seller that stocked your odd size, they knew things about you that you wouldn't necessarily want public, but they were just very good at it, you got what you wanted quickly, they were always looking out for you, so you really did not mind that they had that knowledge. So it's not so much that Amazon gathers the same knowledge a local store would, it's that it's so lousy at using it to help you out. Not that any of the web or big box merchants is much better...