The trouble of buying gifts is actually an opportunity

A few years ago, there was a magazine in Japan with middle-aged and elderly men as its main readers (this kind of magazine in the picture, but not the magazine in question), and two popular themes were produced; one of them was "How to Under the law, transfer some of your assets to a woman who is not your wife in a legal way.” Another is “How to choose gifts for women’s children and grandchildren.”

The reason for the popularity of these two topics is not only because of the ambiguity and controversy implicit in them, but:

• No matter how you feel, there are such needs in society, especially for economically affluent middle-aged and elderly men who "have the means to manage."
• Behind these two topics, there are huge business opportunities; especially the first topic involves the professional services and corresponding fees of lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, financial consultants, banks, and even doctors. And to achieve this goal, these costs are worth paying, the point is that someone tells you how.

But this article is going to talk about the second topic "helping children and grandchildren to pick gifts".

It's hard to pick a gift

Picking a gift can always be difficult, no matter who you buy it for. Unless the other party has already ordered food and said what they want, I am afraid that it will be inconsiderate to buy it, and it will hurt my wallet if I buy it, and it will hurt my feelings if I buy it cheap; It's really hard to pick if it's not practical and a waste of money.

So I basically support "no gifts, no gifts", but there are always some objects or occasions that must be given. If they are friends of similar age and life experience, it is easier to come up with something; even if they are a little off, they are more considerate of each other.

But it is really difficult to buy for juniors, and the bigger the age gap, the more difficult it is. Regardless of whether the "female children and grandchildren" in the original title is ambiguous, this is indeed a difficult problem to deal with (and it is relatively simple to be ambiguous, just buy expensive ones).

I found it on the Internet, there are many so-called "gift guide" articles ( such as this one ), but it is still a bit troublesome for uncles and uncles who don't have time to read long articles.

I don't know if anyone has thought of or done such an e-commerce guide website (I simply searched the Internet and couldn't find it), and after entering, it directly provides these gift recipient options:

• gender
• age
• age difference between you
• Relationship (near/mid/far)
• Approximate gift type (electronic products / accessories / art / daily necessities, etc.)
• budget range
• Favorite Colors...etc

Later, it will be linked to a certain e-commerce company (or multiple cooperative e-commerce companies, and then take a cut) to list candidate products, and you can place an order for purchase if it is suitable.

important perceptual conditions

Of course, the more detailed the conditions are, the more accurate the results will be, but in practice, it cannot be too detailed, otherwise it may affect the decision-making results (for example, when you answer half of the answer, you feel annoyed and jump away). Therefore, more detailed "perceptual conditions" such as age difference, relationship distance, color preference, etc. are actually very important, and the result of "everyone is looking for the same" or "find my heart" will be found.

Ideally, this screening result should be able to be manually adjusted by a suitable "curator" based on festivals, weather, and popular topics (or "cooperating with activities") to manually adjust the background parameters, so as to produce results that make people feel at the moment as much as possible. "Ah, yes, that's it!" filter result.

Although it is standard practice for e-commerce companies to predict consumer behavior purely by keywords or description data (metadata), it can easily become "the same result for everyone", not to mention that many e-commerce companies do not even do this well (yes, Just talking about you, PChome).

But if we can add roughly quantified perceptual factors and allow some unexpected results to appear (in the future these two points may be helped by AI, but human planning is still important), it may make e-commerce more unique. Instead of just rigid "keyword related search results"

One more thing…

By the way, it is recommended that e-commerce companies can deliver this kind of gift within 24 hours, because the gifts sent by uncles are often suddenly remembered a day or two before.

Announcement by the way

• The subscription fee of the main site has been lowered as previously announced; however, because the system sets the minimum monthly subscription fee to US$5, it cannot be lowered any further, so the annual subscription fee can only be lowered from US$50 to US$30. Thank you for your patronage.
• In addition, a single NT$100 sponsorship function has been added. If you are interested, please use this link (in testing).