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i havent come to a personal conclusion on if its even a feat of engineering. Im impressed by amazon’s handling of logistics, and I do think consumer data helps
by krtong 7y ago
i havent come to a personal conclusion on if its even a feat of engineering. Im impressed by amazon’s handling of logistics, and I do think consumer data helps Amazon know when and where products are most likely to sell, perhaps even upsell customers or get customers to agree to a steeper markup, but beyond that, i don’t think actual predictive models of consumer behavior has really been achieved here. Ive never gotten a sense that amazon intuits my consumer habits and ive made a lot of purchases over the years. i dont think amazon has made a dime on storing timestamps for when i turned a page on a kindle or learned anything from the music i listened to. ive never bought a single recommended product. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being Delos incorporated and perfectly modeling user behavior—-accurately predicting how i’ll react before I even see the products they place in front of me—and 1 being Wall-E making blocks of trash, id say this data collection is a 2.5 at best.
- willberman 7y agoI would personally define efficacy of predictive modes to be a scientific achievement rather than engineering, but that might just be a vocab discrepancy. Do you think it’s possible to determine how good their modeling is externally? I would assume we’d need an extensive peek behind the curtains to come to a conclusion.
- krtong 7y agoThinking about your question I just scratch my head and keep returning to the answer "no I don't." I can't think of a single test of Amazon's consumer behavior model better than search results and product recommendations. If you want to know whether you understand my consumer habits you need to interact with me and get me to buy your predictions. Not to mention, content predictions across the board are awful. Amazon, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, Google, Spotify, Soundcloud, you name it they all try to predict what I'm looking for and none of them have figured it out. If one of them was remotely close I might be concerned that there's a formula for how to get me to buy things but so far Im stuck digging through garbage piles for the things I want.