I hadn't noticed this feature on amazon.com before - although it seems as if it's been there since April.
Product pages on amazon.com now show the aggregated purchase behaviour for similar products. My initial reaction was that this was pretty cool - a great way of using crowd wisdom to inform a purchasing decision. I've blogged a little bit before about the problem of too much choice, and this seems like a great way of narrowing down the options.
Which is great - for stuff like cameras, and flash cards, and hard disks. It's not great for books and music, even if, on first glance, the amount of choice seems far larger. But actually, it isn't, or not in the same sense, as the choices aren't mutually exclusive - once you buy one camera, you won't be buying another one for a while. Buying a book, however, doesn't prevent you from buying other books - even similar books. Amazon have, of course, worked this out, as they don't show this information for books and music.
Nice feature, and given Amazon's focus on measurement and testing, it's a reasonable assumption that this is having a measurable effect on purchasing.
[tags]wisdomofcrowds, crowdwisdom, choice, amazon[/tags]
Product pages on amazon.com now show the aggregated purchase behaviour for similar products. My initial reaction was that this was pretty cool - a great way of using crowd wisdom to inform a purchasing decision. I've blogged a little bit before about the problem of too much choice, and this seems like a great way of narrowing down the options.
Which is great - for stuff like cameras, and flash cards, and hard disks. It's not great for books and music, even if, on first glance, the amount of choice seems far larger. But actually, it isn't, or not in the same sense, as the choices aren't mutually exclusive - once you buy one camera, you won't be buying another one for a while. Buying a book, however, doesn't prevent you from buying other books - even similar books. Amazon have, of course, worked this out, as they don't show this information for books and music.
Nice feature, and given Amazon's focus on measurement and testing, it's a reasonable assumption that this is having a measurable effect on purchasing.
[tags]wisdomofcrowds, crowdwisdom, choice, amazon[/tags]
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