False premise, IMO. I think their interest is to encourage you to buy stuff, preferable from their paid advertisers. The "stuff" doesn't have to be what you were searching for, so they throw in other things for you to look at -- probably based on your purchase and search history. PITA, I know. But very predictable behavior.
But that’s not how marketers think. If they know you’re shopping for sneakers, they want to show you other “adjacent” products. Maybe you’d like a new running shirt or a water bottle or insoles, for example. Physical stores do the same thing by positioning related products near each other, even in different departments.
? Not a false premise at all, at least not for me, can't speak for others. Trying to goad me into buying things I've shown no interest in will only serve if anything to tick me off and shop elsewhere...so yeah, the "stuff" does have to be what I'm searching for.
Then they think wrong IMHO. But again that's just me. Maybe other people like seeing adjacent products so that's why they do it; can't say.
They do it because it works. Impulse purchases are a very real thing. Pay attention the next time you're in a supermarket or Target or wherever. What is on the end caps? What has special signage to catch your attention? What is prominently displayed perhaps somewhere in the store other than where it really belongs? Stores use all sorts of marketing techniques to get people to buy things they may not have been aiming to buy. Supermarkets put kid-friendly items on lower shelves, for example, so the little ones see them while shopping with mom and dad. Suppliers pay extra for preferential placement of their products too. At our supermarket, they totally rearranged the candy aisle recently and now all of the Hershey products are at the front. They used to be toward the back. Hershey is now paying extra to have their stuff in a more prominent location.
You misunderstood my point. Your premise, you stated that "If their interest is to target well." That's what is false. My point is that their interest is not to target well, it is to sell stuff.
That's just it. They want shopping online to be more like shopping in-store. As more and more people shop online almost exclusively, they need to alter their methods to attract those impulse purchases. I don't like it any more than you do. I hate when I do a search and get all sorts of random crap in the results rather than what I'm looking for, but that's why it happens.
Google talks in terms of thousands of search experiments they run every day to see which are the most effective. I don't think that Amazon, Target, etc. are likely to be any different. I'm sure those experiments have taught them a number of highly proprietary techniques that are very effective at stimulating sales of complementary items and impulse items. IOW they know exactly what they are doing, including calibrations of how far they can go before customers become annoyed and go to another vendor.
So they are trying to sell stuff by showing customers less of that stuff that they specifically said they want.
But it is different. Using general web search engines like Google is on the whole not the same as using one within a retail web site. People often use things like Google for many reasons not related to shopping and often in vague terms, so the search engines try to show anything related to those terms to maximize the odds of giving the user what they want. Which should be the whole point. If someone is shopping online, they usually are shopping for something specific; it's quite clear what they want. You'd think therefore that's what they'd get, but often they are getting a bunch of other stuff thrown in their face they did not want.
? Of course I don't expect all businesses to bow down specifically to me (oh if only
). I just think it makes sense in general to show shoppers what they asked for, not what they didn't ask for but businesses hope they change their mind and want. And while it's a small sample size to say the least, the responses here so far would seem to bear that out. It could be interesting to see what a large-scale poll showed.I question if this type of search engine is ubiquitous, even though it feels like it sometimes, so that point may be moot, but ubiquity isn't in itself proof that something works. Most businesses tend to be very bandwagon/keep up with the Joneses in their thinking. If something becomes trendy or deemed the hot new whatever, everyone jumps on it. MS Windows is a perfect example. It's had its share of crap versions, but once it became the mainstream OS for most businesses, they flocked to any new version that came out without stopping to consider if it really would be an upgrade or not.
But this is the nature of advertising. It’s all around us, on billboards, tv commercials, print media, everywhere on the internet. When you walk down the street you encounter images of promoted goods everywhere. When you walk into a grocery store there are hundreds of items being promoted. You have to walk by them all to get to the products you went to purchase.? Of course I don't expect all businesses to bow down specifically to me (oh if only
I still think many are missing OP's point. This is not about general search engines, or general billboard adverts, it's about the search function within a specific store (Home Depot, Amazon, O'Reilly Auto Parts, etc).
Someone gets it, thank you!
It's not about whether it "should" be different, it simply IS different. I can walk down the street and easily ignore billboards, but it's kind of hard to ignore the results of a search where you expect to see what you're looking for.
A distinction without a difference. Even if he goes to Home Depot for a 2x4 he will have to walk past the Halloween decorations taking up lots of aisle space, all the grills around the entrance, all on heavy promotion.
What would this sight be if all the curmudgeons suddenly stopped posting.
I still disagree. When I do a walk-around 'search' in the B&M store, the pine 1x2, 1x3, 1x4, 1x6, 1x8, etc are all next to each other. Nearby are the various lengths and qualities, 'good' (marketing speak for 'bad'!), prime, select, etc. There's not a bunch of unrelated stuff between the 1x2 and the 1x3s.
You mean "site'?What would this sight be if all the curmudgeons suddenly stopped posting.
Wait! Don't answer that.
That would only apply if it was an intentional by design. I don't believe that is what we are talking about - we are talking about incompetence/indifference.Your last sentence should probably be: "You may not like it, but I think its ubiquity is proof that it works - for THEM."
