Recommendation Systems in the Real World

Have you heard about the famous Jam Experiment? In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper from Columbia and Stanford University presented a study based on their field experiment. On a regular day, consumers shopping at an upscale grocery store at a local food market were presented with a tasting booth which displayed 24 varieties of Jam. On some other day, the same booth displayed only 6 varieties of Jam. The experiment was being conducted to adjudge which booth would garner more sales and it was assumed that more varieties of jam would fetch more people to the counter thereby getting more business.