According to your personal experience, do the “recommendations” work for you?? For example?

[chiaying_lin]

There is always something like facebook friends' recommendations, Amazon book recommendations and news recommendations, the websites always try to guess what you think and what you need. Do this kind of “recommendations” work for you and being an effective marketing way to make you spend more??
For example?

[Eva_Berends]

To me it kind of does! The websites try to save your shopping information, or suggest friends on social networking websites as you mentioned. When buying online, I start with a clear idea of what I want or need, but once the recommendations pop up, I forget about my original thoughts. I think it works for me because it is a quite indirect way of making recommendations. When a shop assistent tries to help you or makes recommendations, it is direct and you can not ignore him/her, which could be annoying. In the case of recommendations online, you can more easily, ignore the text by paying no attention to it. That is what makes it work for me, I guess.

[camille_girard]

Yes I think it is working on me. It depends on the website and the product. I like to share with my friend especially when they already bought the product if it is worth buying it. Sometimes I even go on forum to see some customers' opinions. It is very effective for expensive product and service (hotel, restaurant, hollidays, etc...)

[Jamie_Tang]

This works for me all the time. I used to always buy CDs and books on Amazon.com, and get sucked into buying other things under the "you might like this as well" list. Then instead of buying only one book, I'd end up with 5 or 10.

[TA_Allen]

Interestingly for me, I think it works better than in real life when shopping at a department store. When asked if I need help, I usually decline and suggest that I am just "kan kan"ing or looking. When there, I really feel the intrusion and I often don't trust the salesperson to know more about the products than I do. But, for whatever reason, I am very likely to check out what others "like me" are buying online. It just doesn't feel as intrusive. On the other hand, a few sites have "directed" my search or been more intrusive into how they reveal their recommendations and this can annoy me.

[Lin_Chen]

It works for me all the time, too. I always purchase my textbooks and leisure books from Amazon.com, and a month later I usually will receive a recommendation from Amazon about a similar book. Though, I tend to delete those emails. Also, on iTunes, there are specific song/artist recommendations in their online store. I will occasionally check out the songs they recommend, and if I like it I will buy it.

[Erin_Lo]

I am Erin from group 6. When talking about recommendation, I think it's depends on the situation. For example, when I visit on-line stores just for a certain product (a t-shirt or a pair of shoes), then I'll always just focus on searching things that I am looking for and ignore those recommendations appears in the right hand side. However, if I go on-line shopping just for fun and want to spend some of my free time, recommendations really work for me in this situation. I 'll look up those recommendations and perhaps choose some of them to buy. For me, as long as I enter the website searching something to buy, I definitely will find something to pay for it and buy it.

[Jamie_Tang]

Its interesting how Allen says this works on him better than in real life. Does everyone else feel this way as well? (I do, but I never really noticed until thinking about it today)

[Eva_Berends]

Its interesting how Allen says this works on him better than in real life. Does everyone else feel this way as well? (I do, but I never really noticed until thinking about it today)

I kind of feel the same about it as Allen, as I tried to make clear in my post

[Jamie_Tang]

I kind of feel the same about it as Allen, as I tried to make clear in my post

Oops, you're right you did say that too. I'm sorry I must have been reading too fast and missed it the first time. Sorry! As both Eva and Allan said

[YOUNGJIN_KIM]

haha...I like saying 'kan kan'. yeah sometime when we walk into the shop and asking a help, i feel sorry to say i'm fine or need a help. because yes I haven't looked around yet so I don't know yet i need a help or not. But when I go to a supermarket like Carrefour or food area in department store, staffs recommend some free food to taste, I do always taste them and sometimes find really great ones. on the web, we can just ignore the recommendations or if someting that you are into pop up, then clicking immediately. I think it works for me

[Jamie_Tang]

Hmm, that reminds me of Costco food samples. I think it might be the only in life recommendations that work on me. Most other things I feel the same way as Allan and Eva, I generally try to avoid salespeople because I feel they try to push all these different sorts of products on me, and I don't have the money to buy any of them... or I just don't want them xD

[Eva_Berends]

I try to think of annoying examples of recommendations now. The Iphone applications for example... After installing some applications, they recommend others, but nobody needs 40 weather forecasts and 25 different traffic information applications. So the recommendations can also be annoying if they kind of substitute what you already have.

[Jamie_Tang]

Ahh, so sometimes in the case where the recommendations come so excessively that they actually make you want to stop using the product itself (such as that specific iPhone app with annoying advertisements)... we can use some examples for those too! When is it just too much to be effective anymore? Since nobody ever minds the recommendations on say Amazon.com, but when we get them with other things like iPhone apps, they're crazy annoying...

[Eva_Berends]

I think it gets too much when the recommendations are kind of useless and substitute the product you just bought or the application (in my Iphone example) you just downloaded. Useless recommendations could be seen as some kind of spam, which discourages people and keeps them from buying, I think.

[Lu_Song]

I agree that too much personal interaction from sales people is a definite turn off. In fact, I really don't like places like Taipei 101 because in each small store, there's 5 or 6 sales ladies watching me like a hawk. I just wish they'd leave me to browse on my own. I find them intimidating and I feel pressure to purchase if they waste 10 minutes of my life provide their suggestions. It's tricky to find the balance between good customer service and too little or too much. I personally like it best if there's one or two available if I need them, but not stalking me like an eagle.

[chiaying_lin]

First of all, thanks everyone for your sharing and valuable opinions.

Just like you guys, the online recommendations do work for me all the time!
sometimes it's quite convenient and user friendly,
for example, whenever im checking some videos on youtube, there are always some "you might be interesting in this video too" recommendations, and often, i find some awesome videos there.

hehehh
and sometimes, the recommendation thing does make me spend more money!!!!!! I agree with Eva, Allen and Jamie that online recommendations work on me better! For instance, when i go buying some makeup product in department store, when the sale says that "you may need this lotion too." I always take it with reservations. But when I shop the same kind of stuffs online, the recommendations usually make me buy more!

I think maybe one of the reasons why the online recommendation thing works on people better than in real life is because that online, there are lots of related stuffs right there, and you can just click on what you interest in, but on the other hand, in real life cases, the sale may not really get what you want and keep recommending the things you actually not interest in and become kinda annoying!in!

[Ian Chen]

Ahh, so sometimes in the case where the recommendations come so excessively that they actually make you want to stop using the product itself (such as that specific iPhone app with annoying advertisements)... we can use some examples for those too! When is it just too much to be effective anymore? Since nobody ever minds the recommendations on say Amazon.com, but when we get them with other things like iPhone apps, they're crazy annoying...

I think the annoying problem can be blamed to poor recommendation system design!!!!!

Amazon, for example, develop their business recommendation engine since early 2000s. Amazon is considered a leader in online shopping and particularly recommendations. So, in my opinion, recommendation system is the key to success as the concept of e-business blooming these days.

For more info about "Recommendation engine" you can refer to the article

"The Art, Science and Business of Recommendation Engines"

click the link and see -> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/recommendation_engines.php
for more advanced knowledge...

[MaoHung_Wang]

Recommendation is work to me too, and I trust it because people can't get profit by recommending. If recommendation is tied by advertising link or something then I won't trust that much. When I buy new 3C product, the first thing I will do is go to bbs and collect information about what I want to buy. That's much trustworthy to me than advertising single.

[Jamie_Tang]

Also, this isn't quite a part of the recommendation system, but another thing to get you to buy more online, is offering free shipping over orders above so much. I know that always gets me, because I buy just enough so I will get the free shipping, and it ends up being like 2-3 more items each time xD

[MaoHung_Wang]

I will try to ask my friends to buy together for free shipping or if I am not hurry, I will buy it latter with other things.Just be stingy

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