Have you heard this:
"Millions of shopbots will be moving across the web seeking best prices for individuals and corporations."
Who needs people? We have shopbots. Shopbots will do our shopping for us. They will find the best prices. They will even plan our vacation for us: they will buy our airplane tickets, arrange accommodations for us, and even buy tickets for shows. Researchers are busy dreaming up new and more wonderful ways to use shopbots.
A FANTASY
This is a fantasy. Nothing of the sort will happen. Most shopbot ideas, I believe, are based on false assumptions: that consumers want it, that business wants it, and that it would work. Here are four reason why shopbots will play a limited role in our future shopping activity:
- Shopping Delight
Many consumers love to shop. They enjoy the experience. They go with friends, with whom they converse and eat out. At the various stores they enjoy seeing, touching, comparing, discussing things they want to buy, are thinking of buying, or that friends of theirs had bought. Shopping is a social experience.
On the Internet, it is hard to produce such an experience. But those sites that can come close to offering such an experience will succeed.
I can't imagine such shoppers using shopbots.
- Shopping Dread
Then there are people who hate shopping. They consider it pretty close to a waste of time. You may think shopbots are ideal for them. But wait. These are the same people who are likely to be concerned about privacoy. Even shopbot experimenters are worried about the possibility of others learninga about what owners of shopbots are doing.
In addition, people are concerned with more than price. They want quality. How do you compare items for quality?
Service is even more important to them. So the consumer discovers that the XKYZ Company has the cheapest price. When will they deliver? Will they deliver? Will they accept returns? Are they a legitimate company one may trust? How can shopbots compare for a subjective value like service?
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Anti-Shopbots
What about business on the Net? Do you believe that any business will welcome an army of shopbots seeking the lowest price? Of course not. They will fight it with all they have. They will include price ambiguities. They may play around with sizes and other measurements.
But mainly, they will use software - anti-shopbots. A shopbot is supposed to help the consumer find the best price. An anti-shopbot thwarts this purpose. For example, an anti-shopbot may not allow a shopbot to see prices; it may be designed to show prices only to human visitors.
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Shopbot Drudgery
People like to talk of the wonders of software. They forget that all software needs input. Without input the software can not help them in any way. Have you tried to use a spreadhseet without entering good, up-to-date data?
To use a shopbot you must supply it with good criteria to follow. For every purchase, different criteria are needed. And since the Internet is constantly changing, products and criteria need to change. You must constantly be keeping track of all this. Often the shopbot will misunderatand and get the wrong information. You need to "talk" to it again.
THE INTERNET IS FOR PEOPLE
The Internet is for people, not automation. Successful sites cater to people, not automatons. The Internet is a medium for communication among people, not machines. The machines are there to smoothe people-to-people interaction.
Shopbots may be used in specialized applications. But shopping, on the Net or anywhere else, will be done primarily by people.
