And it kind of makes sense if you think about it... really, what are the consequences of seeing these silly over-recommendations? Did you stop buying from Amazon? I bet the vast majority of people shrug or laugh, but don’t change habits.
Also, big one-time purchases tend to be rare, so optimizing a recommendation system around those is probably suboptimal compared to optimizing it around frequent consumable purchases.
Or you tell all your friends about it and end up having a conversation about guitars/dishwashers or whatever.
It may not be intentional on their part, but spin off conversations can be a nice by-product for them. Feels like it helps it stick in the mind, a bit like writing a witty TV ad.
They’ve conflated “most purchases of a toilet seat are made by someone who buys another” and “most people who buy one toilet seat buy a second”.
There’s a small, but high volume group of toilet seat purchases — eg, office buildings or apartment maintenance.