The statement about wine buying being part of the fun is the crux of the issue. I'm not into wine but I am into whiskey, and rather than buy from an online merchant, I much prefer walking into the local shop and getting a recommendation. That process is extremely enjoyable, and one I happily pay a bit more for. Same with craft beers. There are some really great high end sites that cater to luxury goods which are great examples of providing this experience online, but they require a lot of time and design experience, and are about as far from a marketplace as possible, conceptually.
It's a little more complex - a lot of our customers were trading wine to make a profit, and were far more price sensitive. They traded on the site in the early days.
Sadly, the novelty soon wore off, and it turns out the social element is one of the reasons why they enjoy their trading.
> We always knew that people bought this wine for fun.
> The buying process, and talking to others about the wine,
> turns out to be part of that fun.
So yes, you can strip out all of the fun bits and come up with a very efficient transaction process, it's just that the customers want the fun bits more.
If you have not tasted that exact label from that exact winery, you have no idea what you are getting. Same grape, same winery, same year is not necessarily good enough, especially when dealing with interesting and not well known wineries.
In particular, I enjoy getting to know the people who work at a local establishment and understand their taste. For instance, when it came to fine teas, I got to know one tea merchant well enough that she'd say, "This new green came in and I hated it! I thought you'd love it!" because we had entirely opposite tastes when it came to the astringent characteristics of tea. (Think a Pi Lo Chun versus a Sencha, for instance.)
While we are getting better at recommendations, the best salespeople still have a better understanding of what makes you like a product than "people like you also purchased..." algorithms. This may be particularly important in markets that are about different things for different consumers: wine selection may be about taste, or it may be about social signaling. Same is true in the transaction: it may be about the best price, building a relationship, having a relaxing escape (buying cigars, for instance), or any number of other things.
Even when salespeople don't have a better understanding of your tastes they're more likely to be persuasive and more likely to add the perceived value to it... a salesperson who admits to hating something she recommends is a more memorable and compelling call to action than an algorithm
I'm sure Amazon's algorithms often do have a better idea of what I'd enjoy than many of my friends, but friends' recommendations are still more likely to induce me to act than a personalised promo email.
Comments
The statement about wine buying being part of the fun is the crux of the issue. I'm not into wine but I am into whiskey, and rather than buy from an online merchant, I much prefer walking into the local shop and getting a recommendation. That process is extremely enjoyable, and one I happily pay a bit more for. Same with craft beers. There are some really great high end sites that cater to luxury goods which are great examples of providing this experience online, but they require a lot of time and design experience, and are about as far from a marketplace as possible, conceptually.
It's a little more complex - a lot of our customers were trading wine to make a profit, and were far more price sensitive. They traded on the site in the early days.
Sadly, the novelty soon wore off, and it turns out the social element is one of the reasons why they enjoy their trading.
Which social elements did your site include to accommodate that and make their experience online fun as well?
With 'recommendation' you mean tasting? Otherwise i don't see a necessity for a physical process.
I suspect that a lot of it is just about the opportunity to shoot the breeze with a salesperson who shares your passion.
In principle, you could make this work over something like video chat, but in practice I just don't see that working.
From the article:
So yes, you can strip out all of the fun bits and come up with a very efficient transaction process, it's just that the customers want the fun bits more.If you have not tasted that exact label from that exact winery, you have no idea what you are getting. Same grape, same winery, same year is not necessarily good enough, especially when dealing with interesting and not well known wineries.
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at. Sometimes it involves tasting, but not normally.
In particular, I enjoy getting to know the people who work at a local establishment and understand their taste. For instance, when it came to fine teas, I got to know one tea merchant well enough that she'd say, "This new green came in and I hated it! I thought you'd love it!" because we had entirely opposite tastes when it came to the astringent characteristics of tea. (Think a Pi Lo Chun versus a Sencha, for instance.)
While we are getting better at recommendations, the best salespeople still have a better understanding of what makes you like a product than "people like you also purchased..." algorithms. This may be particularly important in markets that are about different things for different consumers: wine selection may be about taste, or it may be about social signaling. Same is true in the transaction: it may be about the best price, building a relationship, having a relaxing escape (buying cigars, for instance), or any number of other things.
Even when salespeople don't have a better understanding of your tastes they're more likely to be persuasive and more likely to add the perceived value to it... a salesperson who admits to hating something she recommends is a more memorable and compelling call to action than an algorithm
I'm sure Amazon's algorithms often do have a better idea of what I'd enjoy than many of my friends, but friends' recommendations are still more likely to induce me to act than a personalised promo email.