I am a big fan of the Amazon recommendation scheme they have in place on the site which automatically recommends new products for you to try based on products you have already bought.
This works great for books, and I have found myself checking out the reviews of recommended books and even buying them. Bonus! Music and DVD’s work well too, recommending a similar genre to the one you have, with similar release dates or people who purchased similar items.
The problem comes with hardware, electronics and photo. I recently added a Belkin USB Port Hub to my wishlist and then basket. Since then, all the hardware section seems to recommend to me is more USB hubs. The same has happened with keyboards. Generally speaking, once you buy one bit of hardware from one genre, you won’t want a similar item. Recommended items can often be other products which I have already sifted through to find the best deal, price, or value.
The recommendations need to be a little more intelligent than they already are, possibly using a default system setup. Once you buy a new part for your system, it could predict what else you might need to buy to accompany that. If you bought all of your stuff from amazon, the oldest piece of hardware could be recommended next.
So, Amazon, please stop recommending pieces of hardware to me which I have just bought!
