01-08-2006, 11:19 AM
Quote: Walmart.com gave the e-retailing industry a lesson in relying on automated cross-selling yesterday when its movie cross-selling system linked a DVD of Planet of the Apes to movies with African-American themes. Walmart.com probably was the victim of a flawed automated rules structure, says Christian Donner, senior consultant and technical architect with Molecular Inc. In a statement issued yesterday, Walmart.com said the system does not work correctly and at this point is mapping seemingly random combinations of titles.
Donner cited another case in which an Austrian newspaper inadvertently put a link to ads for sex toys on eBay at the end of a story on a child molester...
The only way to prevent unintentional connections is to do the process manually. This is not a practical approach for sites with a large inventory and a wide variety of products such as Walmart.com, however, Donner says...
full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=17202