Michael MaozThe joys of home ownership. Mortgages, cleaning services, lawns, plumbers, roofers, electricians, carpenters – it’s like you have hooked up a powerful vacuum cleaner to siphon off your cash from a declining asset class. But it does give a person a view into the world of consumer retail operations from the outside. It’s not that pretty. When I was a kid there was really only one big retailer for appliances and tools. They were ubiquitous in physical stores and catalogs. And here we are a few decades later and I am looking for a water filter for one of their refrigerators.
Full disclosure: I didn’t even know the machine had a water filter. Pure water arrived magically, until I noticed one day an LED that said “0″ next to level, which led me to read the words aside the ’0′ level, and it said ‘water filter level, replace when below 10%.’ Smart refrigerator. Off I went to the manufacturer/retailer website (I didn’t know if the Brand Name meant the retailer manufactured the equipment, or sold some other manufacturer’s product under their name.
There it was: the search engine. I was hopeful and typed in the words X (brand name, make and model) refrigerator water filter replacement. The search took me to the section of the site for appliances and asked me what type of filter did I want? Lawn mower? Vacuum cleaner? Washing machine? Swimming pool? Air conditioner? Refrigerator? Hmmmmmm, let me see, when I typed in X (brand name, make and model) refrigerator water filter replacement, wasn’t that giving them some indication of my intentions?
So, I found the ‘part’ eventually. But as an analyst, I had to go out to Google before buying online from the retailer. Wouldn’t you know it? When I dropped in “X (brand name, make and model) refrigerator water filter replacement” I was given a page on Amazon.com immediately where I could get two filters at a 16% discount, plus free shipping, with one click shopping. Who loves me? Who knows me? Who understands my intentions immediately? Is it the company who sold me the machine, delivered and installed it, and with whom I have the warranty? Or is it the ‘anonymous’ online retailer who through almost alchemy divines my exact intentions and rewards me for participating in a social network with genetic learning algorithms?
Social networks, blogs, communities, reviews: this retailer has them all. But the basics of what I want, and how to expedite that search and purchase are missing.
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