考研阅读精选：网购似曾相识

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SHOPPING ONLINE TURNS DEJA VU
~ posted by Kassia St Clair, December 20th 2011

  Remember the last time you shopped online? You may not, but your  computer does. Some shops use the information about what you looked at  on one site to generate banner advertisements on the homepages of other  sites. I was looking for a potato ricer. The John Lewis site showed they  had two types: Kitchen Craft and OXO Good Grips. I phoned up, reserved  the first of these two and went to the shop to buy it. After that, each  time I clicked on the Guardian homepage I saw an ad for the Kitchen  Craft potato ricer. This week, after looking at a pair of All Saints  boots, I keep seeing the same boots appear on sites I visit. The ad also  shows me three or four pairs of boots that are very similar to the ones  I looked at.
This doesn't seem very smart. Online shops  tend to display items in groups. You click on "boots", a display comes  up for the entire collection, you scroll through the collection and when  you find one that you might like, you click on that to get details and  more pictures. When these banner ads on other sites show you similar  boots to the ones you have looked at they are almost always (in my  experience) showing you something that you have seen.
If  companies are going to use software that remembers what people have  looked at, then they should do something with the information that's  more useful to the customer. Why keep showing us items we've decided  against or perhaps even own? Better to show us coordinating or  affiliated items. If we've looked at Xboxes, show us some Xbox games. If  we've looked at high heels, show us a cocktail dress, some knock-out  earrings or the perfect red lipstick. That would be helpful.