Personalization Will Make Strides in 2012
Trust Apple to show the way. Yes, again! With Siri, personalization makes a significant leap forward, and now the media is abuzz with other possibilities – from Siri on Apple’s version of the television, to Best Buy’s catalog now available on iOS, and for Siri to help shoppers shop at BestBuy.
All this is very good news for the industry!
Once upon a time, e-commerce was an emerging trend. All retailers were forced to think about a dot com strategy. Some are still laggards … I heard the CEO of Pier One Imports on CNBC the other day saying that he intends to launch an e-commerce site this summer. I thought to myself, “Huh? You still don’t have one?”
I think, with Siri, Apple is now pushing the entire eco-system to THINK. Again. The notion of a personalized store still remains elusive. I have told this story time and again. I want my very own, very personalized SAKS Fifth Avenue. I want fashion merchandise that fits my size, my style, my hair color, my eye color, my skin tone, my mood.
Amazon, much as it innovates elsewhere, in terms of its recommendation engine, has remained stuck in the stone ages of personalization, never going further than collaborative filtering. It needs to.
All retailers should start rethinking their personalization strategies. Blue Nile. Netflix. Zappos. Shutterfly.
All web businesses need to start rethinking their personalization strategies. Travel. News. Local Search. Online Marketing. Music.
In fact, all businesses need to start rethinking their personalization strategies. Starbucks. Microsoft. HP.
Hopefully, 2012 will be an exciting year full of innovation in personalization.
Hopefully, it will usher in Web 3.0.
I couldn't agree more. Personalization is the next step in the transition from the outdated mass marketing model of the past 50 years towards a customer-centric one-on-one focus (we call it B2Me) that brings relevance back into marketing.
Unfortunately, the current approach to personalization is based on filtering information to reduce the number of choices. Typically, the customer has no control over the filtering algorithm, or the filtering criteria are so basic that they don't provide any real value (price, brand, etc.). The next generation of personalization should guide the customers in their choices based on who they are, not on product features and attributes.
The B2Me approach to personalization is to combine customer data with product or category expertise, then wrap it in informational content that explains to the customer WHY the product, service or solution is right for them. And then shows them how to use it effectively to gain maximum satisfaction.
To learn more about B2Me, you can visit my blog at http://www.strategies.ca
High cost to personalisation strategies, ends up as layer cake. Voice activation; just natural evolving communication.
Pricing, (comparison) product information & service top of the list. The rest is fine for those that can afford a fifth avenue shopper. For me less is more, hook me with the price & service, the loyalty will come and then the additional social layer cake.
I completely agree, Personalization is the future of eCommerce – however current day personalization as Mark stated is based mostly on collaborative filtering techniques, and the next generation of personalization absolutely should be based on "who the consumer is and what is her/his context" –
Sramana – you are so right on – amazon and other recommendation engines are stuck at stone age of personalization, infact I have read your post almost a year back on definition of web 3.0 and the unconquered frontiers of personalization – inspiring post from a personalization opportunity stand point.
myBantu.com (www.mybantu.com) – a Smart Personal Assistant (voice enabled), very similar app like Siri is our consumer product, that gives 3-9 very relevant and personalized recommendations to the user based on their needs, and gets them done. It combines the wisdom of web, wisdom of friends & social, wisdom of experts in the form of recommendations.
As a part of our enterprise offering, leveraging the same myBantu recommendation engine, we have developed "personalization solutions for eCommerce & online media".
We at GloMantra also strongly believe that 2012 will definitely be an exciting year for personalization, our approach to personalization is very strongly based on "intent" & "context" not on statical approaches like collaborative filtering – in fact our personalization solution for eCommerce, online media outlets is very much based on what we call as "Relevance graph" of a user to provide the users with very relevant & personalized recommendations.
To learn more about our personalization solutions, visit – http://www.glomantra.com
Sramana – Great, it is just about 5 weeks since you have posted this article about personalization making strides in the future, well looks like the future is getting closer…
Here is an article today about the same in tech crunch – http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/29/the-ecommerce-re…
Also at the same time am super excited that this TC article exactly talks about our approach – GloMantra's personalization solutions for Social Commerce delivers recommendations personalized to YOU rather than recommending interests or likes for people similar to you.