If I search for “black running shoes for winter,” marksandspencer.com finds me a lovely pair of lace-up boots…for women. In the last six months, I’ve made 30 orders for 45 products, only one of which came from the women’s department — a pair of slippers for my mother. So there is an important signal being ignored here. Or perhaps M&S knows something about me that I don’t know myself.
In fairness to M&S, modern product discovery is far more complex than it appears. A discovery system must evaluate many signals to determine…
