Facebook's New 'Lookback': Would you want a purchase history Lookback?
0If you haven't seen this, it's pretty incredible (and spot-on when it comes to life milestones).
https://facebook.com/lookback/
Would a visual reminder of items you purchased, perhaps requesting users to submit photos of them using them (G-PG13 only) be something a business could do to incorporate Lifestyle branding while giving customers a moment to shine? Or just be a sad reminder of how crappy an idea it was to buy 27 Greenman Bobbleheads? (They were $2.50 each and the same price to ship as 3!)
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I don't know about "spot on." This was one of the featured images on my lookback:
So, if it works like that, I think I'd rather not look back on purchase history. :)
@Thumperchick, Ha, that's definitely fair. While mine captured a lot of cool things, including my daughter, dog, wife, etc., it did seem to rely pretty heavily on 'popular' content.
It'd be interesting to see the results if you asked someone 1 year later the simple question: Have you used this thing in the last month?
It'd be a really good sign that I liked something if I was still using it a year later.
@dave, what's more, there's a value add for the retailer if they're using a versatile enough tool to track customer buying to find similar products.
If they did use it, heavily or not, in the past year, they may be interested in something that improves that purchase experience even further.
Ex: Have you used the grilling set? Yes. Would you be interested in a kabob set for $14?
@dave, using that as an indicator, I now feel much better about my online shopping habits. With ~5 exceptions for items that broke, were used to their fullest ability, or didn't work for the task in mind, everything I purchased for me or my household from woot since 2010 - now, is still in use often. (We bought a house in 2011 and filled it with crap.)
The "have you used this" question is a good one, though it's easy to imagine products that defy it. (I've never discharged the fire extinguisher in my basement. Have I never used it? Or do I use it every day? Is its purpose to smother fires, or to be available for fire-smothering?)
I once read an equal-parts useful and infuriating book about household organization/decluttering, which prescribed a rule that you should purge your closet of any item that'd gone unworn for six months. But I'm a male variety of person, so I need a dark suit. If I go six months without wearing it, that's great news. But I still need it. (It's nonetheless a helpful rule of thumb.)
But purchase tracking of the kind you suggest, focused on customers' getting more use out of their stuff -- for instance by reminding me when summer rolls around that I've got cedar planks I bought in the off-season -- is way more appealing to me than the weird, unthinking social-media integration you usually see at online stores.
When Amazon suggests upon checkout that I might be interested in sharing the news of my recent purchase on Facebook, it's totally off-putting. Why would I do that?