No automated recommendation system is going to be perfect; it’s either going to over-recommend or under-recommend. From the way the Amazon system works, we can infer that they have decided that missing to the over-recommend side is a better business strategy than missing under.
And it kind of makes sense if you think about it... really, what are the consequences of seeing these silly over-recommendations? Did you stop buying from Amazon? I bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but don’t change habits.
Also, big one-time purchases tend to be rare, so optimizing a recommendation system around those is probably suboptimal compared to optimizing it around frequent consumable purchases.
> I bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but don’t change habits.
Or you tell all your friends about it and end up having a conversation about guitars/dishwashers or whatever.
It may not be intentional on their part, but spin off conversations can be a nice by-product for them. Feels like it helps it stick in the mind, a bit like writing a witty TV ad.
I can see what you are saying, the downside is pretty much nil. And it seems like people do buy more guitars than just one. I'm currently just entering this phase where I just now stopped regretting the purchase because I couldn't play any music out of it initially. :)
And it kind of makes sense if you think about it... really, what are the consequences of seeing these silly over-recommendations? Did you stop buying from Amazon? I bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but don’t change habits.
Also, big one-time purchases tend to be rare, so optimizing a recommendation system around those is probably suboptimal compared to optimizing it around frequent consumable purchases.