Some massmarket ecommerce sites such as Amazon have expanded

Some mass-market, e-commerce sites, such as Amazon, have expanded the concept of customization to their customer base. The company has created an affinity group by drawing on certain users\' likes and dislikes to make product recommendations to other users. Check out this pioneering online retailer at www.amazon.com.

What might motivate some consumers to read a \"Top Sellers” list?

Is the consumer\'s level of involvement with an online book purchase likely to be high or low?

Solution

The model being followed by Amazon is nothing new and has been in use for many years by brick and mortar compnanies. For instance an offline or a physical bookstore has on display a list which mentions the top selling books category wise - i.e top 10 sellers in fiction, top 10 in non fiction, 10 tep in children books etc.

The same model is now being used by e-commerce sites like Amazon. They are creating affinity groups to push sales through product recommendations. This startegy helps in pushing sales of books as many consumers like to buy books that are doing good in terms of number of copies being sold. Such books are considered to be good and consumer is very likely to buy them.

No, the consumer\'s involvement in case of online book purchase is relatively lower than the ofline or brick and mortar model. If you go to a bookstore, you will see meany people browsing books, lying on beanbags and couches and reading and browsing books for hours. These poeple spend couple of hours in the bookstore, before finalizing their purchase. In the online model, people do not spend this much time browsing different books, reducing their level of involvement.