3 Detours to Avoid in Retail's Race to Win With Big Data

Detour 2: Hoping (purchase) history repeats itself. At first blush, it seems reasonable that if a customer purchased an item at your store, it makes sense to "personalize" their shopping experience by recommending similar or related items when they come back. However, beware of making assumptions about a person's behavior based on history alone. Case in point, this shopper who bought a digital jewelry scale on Amazon.com and wound up seeing product recommendations for a presumed "business" he wasn't in.