In shopping for Mother’s Day the algorithms now think I am female. Obviously, they took the items I looked at for this quest and incorporated them into my profile’s records and are basing new recommendations on them. They are fresher. And they have left over inventory they want to move. So, I get it.

This shopping for another persona has to be a relative common phenomenon since personalization became a buzzword, so I don’t get why this hasn’t been solved over a decade later. People shop for others’ birthdays all the time. And maybe my solution below doesn’t exist because people impulse buy for themselves and others based on getting things suggested later. And, one can go into the recommendations and delete off items to restore them to normalness.

This other persona influence to recommendation must have happen so much that I am surprised that such companies that use it have not created shopping modes.

1. Allow users to say they are shopping for another person. Associate the personalization that that profile. Based on what is bought for that person, the suggestions can get better.
2. With some sort of confirmation from the person being shopped for, they might make recommendations based on their wishlists. Although mine are sorely out of date.
3. If the user is looking for things that seem… uh… out of character or in character for the subject of an upcoming holiday like mother’s day or father’s day, then prompt the user if they ought to change modes.