A new patent which Amazon just received for it’s “gift converter” system deals with a problem that is so unbelievably common, it seems almost impossible that someone hasn’t already addressed this situation – how to prevent bad gifts in today’s ecommerce marketplace.

      Bad gifts are as old as gift-giving itself (I mean seriously, frankincense?), but until now, no one has come up with a system to deal with these well-intentioned misfires short of a strained smile and a half-hearted “Thanks?” while you silently pray that the receipt is included somewhere (or that you can stealthily “regift” it – give it away to someone else).

      Amazon’s gift converter system or “system and method for converting gifts” (as their patent documentation puts it) has come up with a way to prevent bad gifts from happening in the first place. Users set up “rules” to govern the gifts which others are attempting to buy for them. Some aspects clearly should be known by the buyer upfront, but can be hard to find out without awkward direct questions (prime example: clothing size!). Depending on your relationship with the person and how long you have known him or her, other things like favorite styles and colors, or more appropriately, colors to avoid, could also be uncertain.

      The Amazon gift converter system deals with all these issues. When a gift is selected by a a buyer that goes against the preset rules that the user has opted into, the system responds by declining the sale and instead pointing the buyer to a similarly-priced item that is pre-approved by the user.

      The etiquette of gift giving (and what to do with a less-than-perfect gift) has always been extremely delicate because feelings are involved. Gift-givers don’t want to risk a bad gift and the message that could send to the recipient, while at the same time, the recipient is under an equal amount of pressure to not hurt the feelings of the giver, leading to feigned enthusiasm. Amazon posits in its patent documents for the gift converter, that this etiquette dynamic may lead gift givers to purchase “safer” gifts, that is, gifts less likely to cause a highly negative reaction in the recipient. The double-edge to this sword is that these “low risk” gifts also tend to have a lower chance of inducing extreme satisfaction in the recipient.

      The modern custom of including the receipt with the gift, and possibly adding the caveat “Feel free to exchange it if you don’t like it,” to the accompanying card doesn’t do much to mitigate this situation, as it can be perceived as an inconvenience to the recipient, and a snub to the giver. The controls for the gift converter allow recipients to silently weigh-in on the buyer’s choices, and shift the gift-giving conversation more towards things they would actually like to receive, as well as completely avoiding things that they don’t want, all without saying a word and without hurt feelings.

      Just because Amazon is first to market with their gift exchange system and has a massive team of programmers and developers to plan and implement it, doesn’t mean that a burgeoning ecommerce startup can’t offer similar tools to help their customers get the best experience from their systems. For instance, many ecommerce solutions are working on providing account functions for 2011 ecommerce trends that will allow users to list information like clothing sizes, favorite colors, and desired styles/designers, which can go a long way towards helping clueless gift-givers come out alright. A past history of each user’s purchases combined with a wish list, item registry, or recommendations based on surveys / user feedback are all great options. The best ecommerce software provides simple wish list technology, but it’s likely that this new Amazon patent will force the traditional wish list to evolve into something more powerful.

      The privacy of account/social elements would necessarily have to be under the control of the user, allowing them to choose if all other users can see all this information, or if only certain information is public for all users. Another alternative is adding a social element like ShopSocially and JoeShopping, where most of this information is tracked, users have the chance to discuss different products, and bring select other users into their network, while keeping their information private from others.

      It will only be a matter of time before we see how successful the new Amazon patent will be for the 2010 holiday shopping season. While the technology is patented, it is likely that merchants will want similar tools in their online stores, so ecommerce software companies will have to work hard in 2011 to beef up their wish list features and help merchants provide their customers with the personalized experience that online shopping keeps trending towards.

Source from ZippyCart Blog E-Commerce News

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