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:
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
“The most important fact about our shopping malls, as distinct from the ordinary shopping centers where we go for our groceries, is that we do not need most of what they sell, not even for our pleasure or entertainment, not really even for a sensation of luxury. Little in them is essential to our survival, our work, or our play, and the same is true of the boutiques that multiply on our streets.”
—Henry Fairlie (1924–1990)