“Employee error” contributed to a cross-selling effort on the Wal-Mart Web site that suggested that buyers of “Planet of the Apes” DVD boxed sets would also enjoy four African-American-themed films, including biographies of Dorothy Dandridge, Tina Turner, Jack Johnson and Martin Luther King, the company said Friday.
The mistake occurred because employees linked the four movies to an “item group” of 263 DVDs and boxed sets, in preparation for an Internet cross-selling promotion tied to the celebration of Dr. King’s birthday next Monday. Other DVDs linked to the four movies included “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Incredible Mr. Limpet”.
“Unfortunately, as a result, some of the inadvertent combinations were very offensive,” Wal-Mart said in a statement. The company said it “took immediate action, taking down the offensive combinations as well as shutting down the entire movie cross-selling system. Steps are currently being taken to examine and scrub the entire catalog in order to dramatically reduce the recurrence of any inappropriate or offensive combinations.”
As of Sunday, the recommendation feature for Wal-Mart DVD purchases was still turned off.
Wal-Mart uses a manual system to assign movies to certain “item display groups” and then uses software to guide shoppers to other movies within that group. In contrast, other Internet retailers such as Amazon.com base their recommendations on users’ actual past purchases and those of other customers who have bought the same items.
