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Professional Shopper Tests the Web

Would a professional shopper who spends her days searching for the best products and prices for her clients have anything to gain by using Web shopping tools? We asked Jennifer Butler, a personal shopper for Hollywood film studio execs and Top 40 musicians, to test-run some Web shopping agents to see if they could do her job.

Butler never knows what her clients will request: It could be the perfect teapot one day, a Rolex watch or designer duds the next. When we contacted Butler, her list included a TV/VCR for a busy executive who was tired of missing her must-see TV, a selection of wool winter coats for a client heading to upstate New York, and an antique end table for another executive.

Normally Butler would need a week to find all the items on her list, running from store to store and flipping through endless catalogs. "The Web has always seemed like a big catalog in some ways," she says, "but it's so big I thought it would be too hard to find anything."

In fact, her first try at Web shopping turned out to be deceptively easy.

Butler began with the TV/VCR at MySimon.com. Since the TV was destined for an armoire that the client already owned, it couldn't be larger than 28 by 27 inches, preferably with a 27-inch screen. Furthermore, it had to have front-end speakers, since the sides of the TV would be enclosed in the armoire, and the VCR had to have at least four heads. Finally, the unit had to cost no more than $1200.

MySimon.com immediately led Butler to a Panasonic PVC 2780 at 800.com--a unit that met every one of her specifications. It also cost about half her asking price. Sold. That was easy. It looked like e-commerce had a new convert.

After printing out her purchase order, Butler optimistically went to StoreRunner.com in search of women's winter coats and an antique end table. But this round of research proved more difficult. After several tries, the only coat any of the bots found was a Burberry trench coat--not exactly the elegant wool version her client had in mind. And the query for the antique furniture turned up nothing at all. What's more, there were no fellow customers or salespeople around to direct her to stores where she might find what she wanted.

After spending 2.5 fruitless hours in front of the monitor, Butler grew weary. "It's interesting that I can spend all day walking into different shops, just looking around, but I've already had enough when I'm shopping [online]." While it had been fairly easy to navigate the various shopping agents, Butler was left with the feeling that there was a lot more on the Net than the bots were able to find. Clearly, she didn't have to worry about clients replacing her with a robotic shopping assistant in the near future.

"I provide a service that these sites don't," Butler said. "I've got ... clients who don't like to shop, some who [need] help creating a particular image.... I'm like an interpreter of style and trends [for them]. So I see these sites as an added resource, rather than as competition."

Overall, her success with the TV/VCR was undercut by the unavailability of the other items on her list. "I would use online shopping as a supplementary service to offer my clients," Butler concluded, "but I don't see it becoming my sole means of shopping any time soon." --David Bock