Discovery shopping (also known as discovery shopping search) is a type of online shopping that emphasizes the browsing aspects of the shopping experience. Discovery shopping search offers shoppers guided queries for more personalized results. The goal is to recreate the experience of live shopping as a leisure activity, where the items are selected by sampling or viewing a variety of similar or related goods. This is sometimes referred to as window shopping.
Unlike a Comparison Shopping Engine which evaluates prices and feature sets for identical or very closely related products, discovery shopping enables users to tailor product results to suit their preferences. To achieve this experience online, discovery shopping sites offer features such as specifying styles, colors and brands, showing similar items, and displaying results in a visually engaging format. Such tools allow shoppers to narrow down from a large to number of choices to a set of products that they find appealing. Comprehensiveness and relevancy are also critical factors, since choice and accuracy increase a shopper's chances of finding a product they wish to purchase.
Discovery search was pegged as a hot trend for 2007, according to a recent report from Forrester Research.
According to Silicon Valley strategy consultant Sramana Mitra, examples of discovery shopping sites include TheFind.com, Like.com, Mutex.me and ShopStyle.com.
Famous quotes containing the words discovery and/or shopping:
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“It was easy to see how upsetting it would be if women began to love freely where love came to them. An abyss would open in the principal shopping street of every town.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)