Word of Mouse: The Marketing Power of Collaborative Filtering [Hardcover]

John Riedl (Author), Joseph Konstan (Author), Eric Vrooman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2002

At the vanguard of the Internet revolution are two computer scientists from Minnesota who are pioneers of Collaborative Filtering (CF). CF is a technology that enables companies to understand their customers and in turn sell products, goods, and services with remarkable success. To test CF, John Riedl and Joseph Konstan built two Internet sites, MovieLens and GroupLens, that allowed users to customize their preferences for movies and news. The results were astounding -- MovieLens demonstrated amazing accuracy, almost ensuring that the recommendation would prove enjoyable. In "Word of Mouse," the authors analyze dozens of companies from Best Buy to Amazon to TiVo -- and show what these companies are doing right -- and what they are doing wrong. Riedl and Konstan map out a broad range of strategies that companies can employ to raise revenue, customer loyalty, and satisfaction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you discovered this book--or anything else Amazon.com's technology suggested based on your expressed preferences and past actions on the site--you've seen how so-called recommender technology can point you toward products you are most likely to appreciate. Word of Mouse, by John Riedl and Joseph Konstan, provides excellent advice on using such systems to personalize business offerings and improve their chances of acceptance by a demanding public. Riedl and Konstan, who helped invent the software involved and now work on its integration with companies like Best Buy and J.C. Penney, present eight principles to guide 21st-century enterprises in gathering and employing the kind of knowledge small merchants used in years past to suggest appropriate purchases to specific customers. Citing real corporate examples to illustrate correct and incorrect ways to use such data, the authors show how to harness the information customers provide with "every click and comment" in order to "gain their trust and keep their business." After an overview of the technology, they detail rules like Demonstrate Product Expertise (explaining, for example, how Wine.com helps customers make informed decisions and Godiva.com makes online chocolate shopping more enjoyable) and Watch What I Do (explaining how customer actions have been effectively interpreted by Google, which ranks its search results accordingly, and by PHOAKS, which subsequently began screening ads from newsgroup postings). A concluding chapter on future scenarios reinforces the importance of the book's message. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly

It's a long jump from early dot-com collaborative filtering to the world of absolute marketing depicted in Minority Report, but the underlying principle remains the same: gather information about your customers' preferences and purchases in order to increase future sales. Collaborative filtering software pioneers Riedl and Konstan effectively describe the initial steps toward tagging individual consumer likes and dislikes and turning that information into individualized marketing. While most of us may be trying to forget about the super-hyped promise of e-commerce, this book outlines the steps companies have taken to profile online customers and create content that pushes the spending buttons. The authors acknowledge the utter disaster of early online retailing while explaining how the Internet can be used to learn consumer behavior. Though Internet retailing has a tarnished reputation, the future of product marketing is being hammered out online. Readers may roll their eyes at yet more references to the marketing practices of Amazon and Priceline.com, but there really is monumental work being done to match consumer desires with products-and this books details the progress.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus; 1st edition (August 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446530034
• ISBN-13: 978-0446530033
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,486,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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