Carol is interested in purchasing a new computer and she visits
TechStation.com, an electronics retailer. Carol is a first-time
visitor to this site. After entering a few keywords to search the
site and after browsing through several of the pages she selects
the model she is interested in. Carol adds a printer to her virtual
shopping cart and continues browsing. The observational
personalization system used by the electronics store compares her
point of entry to the site, the keywords she used in her initial
search, her clickstream within the corporate site, and the contents
of her shopping cart to the navigational patterns of existing
customers already in [the] firm’s database. Through this
comparison, the system fits Carol into the “young mother” profile
that it developed by mining the Web navigation logs generated by
previous visitors and existing customers. Accordingly, the
recommendation engine offers Carol a discounted educational
software package before she checks out. Carol was, in fact, not a
young mother, but a middle-aged divorcée. She purchased the
computer and printer she was interested in, but did not find the
time management software she actually wanted to buy. A bit
frustrated, Carol leaves the site in search of the software she
needs. At about the same time, Steve entered the site and selected
the same computer and printer. Although he chose the same products
as Carol, Steve did not receive the same offer for discounted
educational software. He entered the site from a different portal
than that used by Carol; he had a different clickstream pattern
from hers, and he used different terms in his keyword search.
Steve’s navigational pattern resulted in his being assigned to a
different profile. Steve fit best into the “college student”
profile and, as a result, he was offered a discount on a
statistical software package. In fact, Steve is an English major.
Like Carol, Steve’s projected needs did not accurately match his
real needs.

1. Is TechStation.com doing anything wrong?

2. What, if any, information would help you decide
whether the company is doing anything wrong?