Week 5 - a predictive technology

Recently, I read an article " The Web Knows What You Want" from Business Week By Stephen Baker.

Corporates want to know the customer's behaviors for online shopping businesses, so that after a shopper look at/ buy a particular item, the system can appear a recommendation that is precisely what the shopper wants. That's just like a sale clerk could give customers recommendations through observing customer's body language and behaviors in a brick-and-mortar store. This is not a new idea, but they want to adopt a new predictive technology in order to improve the accuracy of recommendations and to earn more money. For example, when I look at or add a camera into my shopping cart at Amazon, it would suggest me to buy related accessories and recommend me what other customers who bought this same item also bought. Every time I log in to my account,Amazon will offer personalized product recommendations to me.

The patterns of clicks, purchases, personal information are analyzed, and many other factors may influence an individual's selection. Also, privacy issues may cause some concern to some online shoppers. However, I have more positive attitudes towards this predictive technology. I'm thinking how time saving this will be and what related terms this will show, if I'm searching information on an online library database. At least from a researcher or a student's point of view, this technology could lead me to dig deeper into more research topics relevant to the field of interest.