Statista’s December 2025 overview says Amazon leads its global ranking of online marketplaces. With their size, Amazon is able to collect a massive amount of big data. Every click, search, and purchase on Amazon is adding to their database, so what does Amazon need so much user data for?
Amazon’s Answer to Too Much Choice
When shopping online, it can be difficult to make a choice when there are so many options and similar products to choose from. On Amazon especially it can be a hard decision considering just how large their product selection is. Amazons answer to this problem is user personalisation, and in October of 2025, they released their “Help Me Decide” feature. The Help Me Decide button uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend the product it thinks is best, according to an October 2025 announcement published in Amazon News by Amazon, the AI does this using user browsing activity, searches, shopping history, and user preferences. Puntoni et al., writing in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marketing in 2021, define a Classification Experience as receiving personalised predictions from AI. Amazon is essentially collecting their big data and then providing it to the Help Me Decide AI which analyses that data and provides a Classification Experience. As a result, the AI is able to make a prediction about which product is the right one for the shopper.
The Three Vs Behind Amazon’s Personalisation
In the classification experience, the use of Big Data will usually make consumers feel understood by reducing decision effort and producing relevant recommendations. However, inaccurate classifications or data collection that isn’t transparent enough can cause consumers to feel misunderstood or exploited. Therefore, to implement personalisation, businesses need to be transparent about the data they gather, they need to put the control of their data in users hands, and the suggestions must be accurate.
Giving Shoppers Control of Their Data
The Big Data that Amazon uses leverages three of the “6 Vs” identified in Gandomi & Haider 2015’s framework proposed in “Beyond the Hype: Big Data Concepts, Methods, and Analytics” an article published in the International Journal of Information Management. Amazon’s big data doesn’t just come from one source, it comes from a Variety of data formats like transactional data, behavioral data, etc. The AI also analyses the Velocity of data, or how recently the data was created to provide results based on recent activity as recent as the same shopping trip. When the Help Me Decide AI analyses this big data, it is able to create Value by offering accurate and personalised recommendations.
How Amazon Makes Personalisation Work
In May of 2026, Amazon implemented their new “About You” feature, which according to an article introducing the feature written by Amazon Staff published in Amazon News on May 13th 2026, allows users to view, correct and remove details that is used for their personalization. Essentially they are providing consumers with transparent data visibility, and placing control of user data in the hands of the users, by doing this Amazon is directly addressing consumer concerns about feeling exploited and allowing consumers to correct any information which may lead to them feeling misunderstood.
In conclusion, Amazons use of Big data and personalisation through AI is very effective as while these methods can reduce decision effort and make shoppers feel understood, they need to be accurate, transparent, and provide consumers control over their data or else customers may begin to feel Misunderstood or Exploited.
Ai Declaration
- ChatGPT was asked to explain how the “6 Vs” relate to Amazons “Help Me Decide” AI
- ChatGPT was tasked with skimming through articles and finding relevant information on how Amazon collects and uses their user data for personalisation
- ChatGPT was tasked with proposing blog structures
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