>You just bought a light bulb? How about a dozen others?
Ironically, this suggestion is probably driven by real-world behavior. Whether your bulb fails due to age (and you'll probably need replacements for your other similarly-aged bulbs soon), or an electrical problem caused the burn (and you might need another replacement soon), or you just want to stock up, having your exact bulb model recommended also saves you a little time on having to check it yourself. :P
I think a lot of "wrong" recommendations are actually right for other users, which seems to be just what you're saying -- they annoy one user but result in more sales for others. From the company's perspective, these recommendation systems are working as expected.
On the bright side, that also means in their best interest to improve accuracy (and drive more sales for more users, instead of just annoying them). Hopefully new tools like Nvidia's announcement result in fewer annoying ads.
No matter what I buy, no matter how niche and one-off the purchase is, Amazon never fails to recommend a hundred similar (usually knockoff) products.
Instead of focusing on what I just bought, they need to focus on predicting what I'll want to buy next. Just because I bought a coffee maker doesn't mean I'm turning into a coffee maker collector.
Ironically, this suggestion is probably driven by real-world behavior. Whether your bulb fails due to age (and you'll probably need replacements for your other similarly-aged bulbs soon), or an electrical problem caused the burn (and you might need another replacement soon), or you just want to stock up, having your exact bulb model recommended also saves you a little time on having to check it yourself. :P
I think a lot of "wrong" recommendations are actually right for other users, which seems to be just what you're saying -- they annoy one user but result in more sales for others. From the company's perspective, these recommendation systems are working as expected.
On the bright side, that also means in their best interest to improve accuracy (and drive more sales for more users, instead of just annoying them). Hopefully new tools like Nvidia's announcement result in fewer annoying ads.