Both Barrels Communications Ltd

Travel sites providing consumer reviews will be able to overcome the issue of fake reviews

Social commerce company Reevoo today announced a deal with Octopus, part of the Kuoni Group, to provide authenticated reviews of cities and hotels offered as destinations by Octopus. The deal heralds the beginning of the end for the problem of fake reviews, consigning to history the kind of allegations that have dogged some travel review sites.

“Travel review sites have been the subject of allegations regarding the authenticity of their reviews on several occasions. This is damaging for all parties because it plants doubt in consumers’ minds,” explained Richard Anson, Reevoo founder and CEO. “But Reevoo only collects reviews from authenticated customers. This, and our independence, means travellers and holidaymakers can be confident that, wherever they see the Reevoo brand, the opinions they are reading are from people who have been on a particular holiday, stayed at the hotel, or gone on that trip.

“As we roll out our service throughout the travel sector, consumers will be quick to cotton on to the fact that sites which continue to display unverified reviews may be making a conscious decision to do so, because they know it doesn’t have to be that way,” he added.

Reevoo’s strategy of proactively contacting people who actually stayed in a hotel or visited a particular city, to invite them to write a review, overcomes the problem of fake reviews. This strategy is at the heart of the Reevoo manifesto announced in September, which focuses on the authenticity of its reviews. The UK Government welcomed Reevoo’s initiative via the Consumer Minister Ed Davey MP.

Research also shows that the independence of reviews is an important factor in determining how they are perceived: consumers trust reviews and opinions provided by an independent provider such as Reevoo three times more than reviews provided by the brand which stands to benefit from them.

In addition to reading reviews, visitors to the Octopus site will be able to ask questions of previous hotel guests directly, via an “Ask a guest” button, helping to provide reassurance and encouraging them to make their booking. Consumers will also be able to rate their own experience with Octopus and see how other travellers rated Octopus, providing continuously updated ratings including the percentage of satisfied customers who would book again through Octopus. Yet more social functionality will allow Octopus to respond in real-time to questions asked or issues raised in reviews.

A spokesperson for Octopus said: “For many people a holiday is the biggest single purchase they make in any year, paying up to thousands of pounds. It is absolutely right that they should know what other people genuinely thought of their own, similar trip, without worrying that the review might not be all it seems. We’re delighted to be leading the way in our sector by making that possible with Reevoo.

“As for allowing people to rate us, we’re confident about putting our money where our mouth is. Knowing what people like and dislike about the Octopus service sits well with our business ethos of listening to customers and continually improving our service. Conversations about our service will happen with or without us, so it is far better to be part of them and to learn from them,” he added.

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Notes to editors
- Reviews for Octopus-offered hotels and cities are provided by Reevoo Mark.
- Service reviews will be provided by Reevoo Reputation.
- Reviews are ‘crawlable’ by search engines. This enables Reevoo Traffic to provide Octopus with valuable, user generated, constantly refreshed, keyword-rich content for SEO purposes.
- The product that allows potential guests to ask questions directly to past hotel guests is Reevoo Conversations.
- The product that enables Octopus to respond in real-time to questions and reviews is Brand Response.
- The research mentioned here is from a consumer survey carried out by Fly Research in September 2011, with 1016 nationally representative UK consumers.

Reevoo Launch delivers reviews from day one of launch without compromising integrity and authenticity of the reviews process

Black & Decker®, one of the world’s largest producers of power tools and accessories, has solved the conundrum of how to deliver launch day reviews for its flagship eVo Multi-tool product. Reevoo Launch has enabled Black & Decker® to solicit authentic consumer reviews of the tool before it was widely available, giving the product a sales boost in the days and weeks immediately following its launch.

Sourcing consumer reviews pre-launch is increasingly vital because almost nine out of ten consumers – 88% – will buy a new product only after reading reviews, yet the margin on some types of product decreases rapidly in the weeks and months after launch. This accessibility of reviews on launch day is therefore critical for creating the maximum impact from social commerce and for maximising revenue.

Reevoo solicits reviews ahead of a launch by working with the partner or brand to offer engaged customers a product in return for an honest review. For absolute transparency, this process is made clear to readers above each and every review collected in this way.

Daniel Kennedy, Digital Services Manager EMEA for Stanley Black & Decker Inc., said: “The early customer advocacy that Reevoo Launch makes possible is of real benefit to us. We wanted to reassure consumers that although the new eVo Multi-tool combines numerous individual tools it still maintains the level of quality that our consumers have come to expect from Black & Decker.

“Although we are remote from the actual sale to a consumer, our research and analytics show that we are now being included in the purchase process. What’s more, using Reevoo Launch has been a Black & Decker brand-building activity in itself,” he added.

Richard Anson, co-founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “Reevoo Launch enables our customers to protect their margins and sell while their products are hottest. It also means getting a head start on competitors – this runs across all marketing channels as review content is syndicated instantly to all marketing campaigns. With user-generated content being the SEO equivalent of gold dust, it’s easy to see why Black & Decker is so pleased with its deployment of Reevoo Launch.”

The Reevoo-collected reviews are displayed across nine of Black & Decker’s international sites using automated translations to ensure maximum value is extracted from every review.

Notes to editors
- The nine markets across which Black & Decker has deployed Reevoo Launch are: UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Greece and Belgium (NL) and Belgium (FR).
- Data regarding shoppers’ tendency to wait for reviews before purchasing comes from a Fly Research Study conducted in September 2011, which asked 1,016 nationally representative UK consumers about their shopping behaviour and usage of social commerce tools.
- For more information about Reevoo Launch, see: http://b2b.reevoo.com/products/launch

Retailers to benefit from having their socially sourced information displayed to 7 million unique users every month at a vital point in the purchase journey

Kelkoo, one of Europe’s largest shopping comparison websites, is adding guaranteed-authentic product, retailer and service reviews to all ten of its European sites via Reevoo Broadcast. This will provide seven million unique visitors per month with important, socially-sourced information alongside existing manufacturer product descriptions and price comparisons.

Chris Simpson, CMO at Kelkoo, said: “In recent years, the customer purchase journey has transformed rapidly into something that is essentially social. Making this sort of information available to Kelkoo visitors is critical in meeting their changing expectations. Such a range of social input enables consumers to make a better purchase decision – which is not just based on price but also on customer opinion, service quality, reputation and more.”

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “This is the first time that Reevoo Broadcast has been deployed by a comparison shopping engine [CSE]. It means that reviews, brand, service reputation, and not just price, are all visible to a much larger number of consumers at a tremendously important point in their purchase journey.

“It’s very much a logical extension to our existing content syndication approach,” he added. “We already display half a billion pieces of social content every month.”

As well as shoppers embarking on their social purchase journey, Reevoo Broadcast benefits both retail and manufacturing brands. Retailers benefit from increased brand exposure, with service reputation reviews helping them to compete on more than just price. Manufacturing brands benefit from the increased exposure of reviews of their products, driving sales of their products across multiple touch points and channels. Across Europe, Kelkoo lists 44 million offers from more than 10,000 online merchants, encompassing countless brands.

Reevoo Broadcast quite literally ‘broadcasts’ the hard-earned social media content of participating retailers and manufacturers – content that includes product reviews, service reviews, and brand opinions. This single action boosts the presence of a brand, improves recognition and generates fantastic brand awareness, and increases the quality and quantity of traffic provided back to the retailer or manufacturer site by comparison shopping engine (CSE) sites.

Reevoo Broadcast is one of several new product announcements from Reevoo [on June 22] that aim to simplify social commerce and help retailers and manufacturers to maximise the value of their social commerce content.

Recent research commissioned by Reevoo provided evidence that socially sourced information is now of huge importance to consumers, with most now relying on social sources to help them make their purchasing decisions. For research on the social purchase journey, download ‘The Reevoo consumer purchasing report, June 2011’ [pdf], and for further details on how the consumer purchasing journey is changing download the ‘Social shopping journey’ whitepaper [pdf].

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About Reevoo Broadcast
Reevoo Broadcast is a push-button service that instantly shares a brand’s product and service reviews with Reevoo’s network of comparison shopping engines (CSEs) and publishers. It makes any participating brand more visible to millions of eyeballs on participating CSE sites, improving the quality and quantity of visitors to their site, boosting brand awareness and ultimately driving sales.

Meets Government requirement for a quality mark for web sites that have clear and transparent consumer feedback

Sony, Currys, PC World, Dixons.co.uk, Everything Everywhere, Best Buy UK, Jessops and Toshiba are among major retailers and brands that have given their support to a new quality mark and manifesto intended to protect consumers from misleading consumer reviews. The manifesto and quality mark are intended to renew consumer trust in such reviews, which has been damaged in the last two years by allegations of fake reviews, paid-for reviews, or the selective display of only good reviews.

Created by leading social commerce company Reevoo, the Reevoo Mark and its accompanying manifesto meet Government objectives for a quality mark to identify authentic social media content. Its desire for a self-regulating quality mark for consumer reviews was described in its consumer empowerment strategy document ‘Better Choices: Better Deals – Consumers Powering Growth’, which was published by the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation and announced by Consumer Minister Edward Davey in April.

The Consumer Minister said: “In the Government’s consumer empowerment strategy, Better Choices, Better Deals, we highlighted the importance of feedback and review schemes. Where the methods used in publishing reviews are robust, transparent and trustworthy they help consumers make decisions, and this in turn leads to businesses improving their goods and services. I therefore welcome this initiative by Reevoo, as informed consumers play a key part in a competitive and fair economy.”

Reevoo’s manifesto sets out the core values of the Reevoo Mark, a quality mark that reassures customers they can trust the online reviews on the websites of all participating brands and retailers. The promises contained in the manifesto provide explicit guarantees that all reviews provided by Reevoo are genuine, come from verified purchasers of that product, include both good and bad reviews, and are not paid-for.

Richard Anson, co-founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “We share the concerns of Government that confidence in online reviews could be damaged. It’s all very well telling people they can trust reviews; now this manifesto makes it totally clear why they can trust our reviews. And the Reevoo Mark says ‘the manifesto applies here’.”

“Reviews are terrifically powerful and extremely valuable – they play a vital role in helping people decide what to buy based on real customer opinion. This is a real step forwards for consumers, who can now buy with more confidence, secure in the knowledge that they can trust the information they use to make their choice.”

Reviews are immensely influential, with 81% of online shoppers claiming they use reviews to decide what to buy (YouGov, 2010).

Signing up to the manifesto and use of the Reevoo Mark also assures the authorities that the retailer or brand is fully compliant with the letter and spirit of the ASA’s current guidelines that stipulate user-generated-content on sites must be ‘legal, decent, honest and true’.

Notes to editors
There have been a number of allegations over the last two years regarding bad practice in the field of user-generated-content. These include the well-publicised allegations against a well-known hotel recommendation site that unverified purchasers were leaving reviews; allegations of payment for reviews and allegations of fake reviews or cherrypicking and only showing good reviews.

Online shoppers are clearly aware of these incidents: research by Reevoo in January 2011 suggested that 38% of online shoppers are unsure who writes reviews and whether they can be trusted; 35% expressed concern that positive reviews are paid for; and 30% worry that only good reviews are shown.

The manifesto states that consumers can trust Reevoo reviews because, together with their partners, Reevoo will always strive to ensure that:
1. All of our reviews are from genuine, verified purchasers.
2. No fake reviews ever make it in.
3. We show the good with the bad. We do not tolerate anyone editing or removing negative reviews or showing only the reviews they like.
4. Our reviews cannot be manipulated.
5. We are always transparent: where a response is from a brand or retailer this will be crystal clear.
6. Our reviews remain impartial and independent.

About ‘Better Choices: Better Deals’
The Government launched its consumer empowerment strategy, ‘Better Choices: Better Deals. Consumers Powering Growth’ on 13th April 2011. The strategy sets out what Government and others can do to help increase consumer power in a rapidly changing and demanding economy. It aims to put consumers in charge so that they are better able to get the best deals for themselves, individually and collectively. It also looks at ways of helping the most vulnerable and disadvantaged who may not otherwise benefit from rapid technological and social change.

An innovative non-regulatory approach, working in partnership with businesses, consumer groups and 3rd sector bodies, it will contribute to economic growth by putting information and influence into the hands of consumers.

Download Better Choices: Better Deals – Consumers Powering Growth (PDF, 761 Kb)

Social commerce solutions are delivering substantial, measurable business benefits despite the current economic situation, figures show. Reevoo partner Jessops reports that social commerce tools have driven conversion rates up by 10 to 15% and that the level of business conducted online has increased from 8% to 28% in just 18 months. Another partner, Dixons Retail, reports that customer satisfaction with its ecommerce site has improved by 6% in the last nine months alone thanks to its social commerce-enabled site.

Such figures, against a backdrop of challenging economic conditions, are commonplace among retailers and brands that are successfully adjusting to changing consumer purchasing behaviour, according to Richard Anson, founder and CEO of social commerce company Reevoo and one of Europe’s pre-eminent social commerce experts.

“Over the past five years the consumer purchase journey has changed hugely; we now refer to it as the social purchase journey. People interact with each other, with brands, and with social content via the web, mobile, Facebook and in-store for example. But the critical fact to grasp is that there is no single, controllable journey; customers can choose to use any channel, at any point in their decision-making, and at any time,” he said.

“This change brings a huge opportunity for brands to inject trust, and trusted social content, at all touchpoints, in order to influence consumers in a trusted, transparent manner. Retailers like Jessops and Dixons Retail, which are embracing the social purchase journey, are enjoying positive benefits even in these difficult times – and it’s Reevoo’s mission to bring these benefits to as many retailers and brands as we can,” he added.

Aiming to make sense of the consumers’ new shopping habits for hard-pressed retailers, Reevoo has published a new ebook detailing the intricacies of the new social purchase journey. The ebook is freely available [registration required] from the Reevoo website: http://b2b.reevoo.com/social-purchase-journey

Esther Soto, Head of Ecommerce Strategy at Dixons Retail, said: “Customer decision making and purchasing has changed, in three main ways. First: our customers are being much more careful when they purchase a product, and they’re researching much more than they used to do. Secondly, the traditional concept of a shopping journey doesn’t really exist anymore. What [our customers] have now is a number of touch points, and they interact with us when and how it suits them. On top of this, mobile and other alternative channels have just added a layer of complexity.”

Chris Scott, eBusiness Marketing Manager (Northern Europe), describes how Toshiba – a brand, rather than a retailer – has responded to the changing customer purchase journey. “What we’ve seen over the last 18 months is that customers are expecting all product information in one location. We’ve responded to this change in the customer journey by providing shoppers with all of the information they need to make a purchasing decision – reviews, ask-an-owner, videos and retailer links – to make the customer’s life easier. It’s about brand engagement pre-purchase. The result is that consumers stay on pages longer and propensity to buy has increased. We’re also seeing mobile becoming increasingly important: over the next two years, we believe 50 – 60% of our users will be on mobile devices.”

Sean Emmett, Marketing and Ecommerce Director at Jessops, said: “People used to use Jessops to research products, but didn’t always go on to buy from us. We’ve increased the amount of advice, reviews, and content on our site so that when customers do their research at Jessops they then go on to actually purchase either online, or through our stores. The big advantage for Jessops is that a lot of customers still prefer to actually come in store to make the final purchase: we find that over 60% of our orders are actually researched and placed online, and then collected in store. Providing the best multi-channel experience is great for Jessops because it allows us to continue their journey, adding further advice and value to the customer when they pick their camera up from our stores.”

Dixons Retail’s Esther Soto says that Dixons will be keeping its foot on the pedal in terms of staying ahead of the game with social commerce: “The market continues to evolve, so we need to be agile and nimble enough to adjust to what our customers are demanding from us at any given time. We will continue to partner with experts like Reevoo to make our customer experience as enjoyable and effective as possible.”

Notes to editors
1. For more extensive quotes from Dixons Retail, Jessops and Toshiba, watch this video (5 minutes)
2. For images that help to illustrate the social purchase journey, see below.
3. Reevoo’s freely available ebook on the social purchase journey contains many more quotes which may be reproduced, in context and with suitable reference. Quotes include:
- “The reality is that just like most other things in life, there is no one thing that makes something happen. People use a variety of methods to make decisions using a combination of tools and resources.” – Frank Reed, Marketing Pilgrim
- “Customers have been providing user-generated content for a decade through reviews, forum posts, uploading photos, etc. Sharing tools now enable more eyeballs to see this fab content, and, even better, the eyeballs know the fingers who created the content.” – Linda Bustos, Get Elastic
- “In highly complex sales situations, participants in the buying process come and go. They may enter the process at the stage of needs specification, only to depart when alternatives are evaluated, or they may participate only when demonstrations are given, for example.” – Dr Jeff Tanner, MyCustomer

Reevoo Analytics offers brands and retailers unprecedented levels of actionable insight into the effectiveness of their social commerce strategies

Europe’s leading social commerce company Reevoo today launched a sophisticated analytics dashboard that delivers unprecedented levels of insight into the performance and impact of reviews and social commerce strategies. Consumer electronics manufacturers Sharp and Sony, and the UK’s biggest retailer Tesco all report measurable performance improvements that they attribute to the new data now available to them.

Reevoo Analytics tracks social commerce activity in real time, ensuring that user-generated content such as reviews work harder for brands and retailers. Through customised reporting tools, tracking of ‘review impact’, monitoring of social content trends and the identification of previously unseen opportunities, its enhanced social commerce analytics suite provides powerful, actionable insights into the performance of social commerce strategies.

Leading consumer electronics brand Sharp has been using Reevoo Analytics since June. Pete Braithwaite, Ecommerce & Online Systems Manager, Sharp, says: “As a customer-focused company, it is imperative that we have as much feedback from consumers as possible to shape future product development and the services we offer. Reevoo ensures we have huge amounts of customer opinion and now with Reevoo Analytics this information is clearly presented, easy to analyse, and we can instantly and directly respond to our customers. It’s terrific to be able to quickly get an overview of customer sentiment on a global level and then drill into a particular category, individual product and even individual product reviews. We can also see at a glance which of our products are best rated and which have room for improvement with the reports, allowing us to provide valuable feedback to our product development and marketing teams. The whole package delivers real value and ensures our online performance is improving daily.”

Anna Burrell, Web Development Manager, Tesco.com, said: “In a short period of time, our trading teams are able to make better stocking and procurement decisions based on Reevoo Analytics’ product reports, which indicate the best- and worst-rated products. The KPI summary, which is constantly updated to show how we’re doing right now is also very valuable because we operate in an online, real-time environment with a low margin for error.”

Sony already uses other Reevoo products in twelve countries across Europe. Manuela Futschik, Communication Manager, Sony Switzerland & Austria, said: “Our site only went live recently, yet already I can track weekly trends and progress on coverage. When dealing with a huge number of product SKUs, the KPI summary is invaluable because everything can be sorted according to the criteria that matter to me, so I can quickly find the information that I need without having to scan through reports manually. The single ‘dashboard’ also makes it easy to manage multiple countries.”

Reevoo Analytics enables:
- tracking of incremental sales and accurately calculates the impact of reviews on revenues
- key metrics to be viewed in real-time and/or downloaded and shared
- trends to be monitored through highly visual snapshots of daily, weekly and monthly figures
- identification of less obvious, hidden opportunities
- reviews or comments requiring attention to receive a rapid response

Its online dashboard displays a real-time snapshot of incremental revenue driven by reviews, and provides instant access to key metrics including conversion uplift, review collection, product coverage and consumer engagement, as well as instant online access to product, category and overall review performance reports.

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “Reports generated by Reevoo Analytics are easily customised by changing parameters including reporting period, product set and more. This makes it extremely simple to monitor top-line figures, track trends over time and – perhaps most importantly – to take immediate action to remedy negative trends. In a real-time environment, what can be more vital or valuable than being able to respond and react, also in real-time?”

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More about Reevoo Analytics
Other features of Reevoo Analytics include:
- tracking and reporting on best/worst performing products
- benchmarking of review performance against other retailers and brands
- the ability to view and manage all your consumer reviews and comments, and easily respond to reviews that have been marked by the Reevoo team as requiring a Brand Response. Reviews may be easily sorted according to several criteria.

The dashboard gives a powerful and quick overview of the status of social commerce content. Its ability to drill into specific time periods makes it simple to track e-commerce activity against specific campaigns or launches, or can be used to support required reporting periods.

About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://b2b.reevoo.com) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo has been deployed by more than 140 major brands including Sony, BestBuy, Tesco and Dixons helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.

Reevoo has solicited more than 2,500,000 pieces of independent, impartial social content from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to this content more than half a billion times every month to shoppers across the Reevoo network.

Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.

Best Buy UK has added Reevoo Reputation™, independent service reviews, to its e-commerce website so customers can rate Best Buy’s ‘service performance’ as well as the products they purchase. Best Buy – which proudly differentiates itself on providing the best possible service – says that displaying the results gives customers, who have decided which product to buy, the confidence to complete their transaction on the Best Buy site.

Pat Foley, Head of Online Operations & Customer Experience for Best Buy UK, said: “At Best Buy we promise an unrivalled level of impartial customer service and advice to make shopping easier and better for everyone. By displaying independent service performance reviews and comments about delivery, customer service and whether other customers would buy from us again, we continue to be an open and transparent retailer, thereby building further trust in our brand.

“Using Reevoo Reputation we’re able to receive instant feedback from our customers which allows us to make improvements to our business just as quickly. In doing so, we are also meeting the expectations of consumers who, nowadays, expect to see that type of socially-sourced information before they commit to buying.”

The presence of Reevoo Reputation service reviews on a retailer’s website provides measurable benefits, helping to gain consumers’ trust, reduce basket abandonment and increase conversion, as well as providing a way of fighting downwards price pressure. Measured across all online retailers, basket abandonment accounts for 20%-60% of incomplete sales, with high-spenders more likely to abandon than low-spenders. However, Reevoo’s own data shows that readers of service reviews have been shown to convert at a 123% higher rate. Recent research commissioned by Reevoo also suggests that 58% of consumers now search for online reviews before buying from a retailer they’ve never heard of.

Using Reevoo Reputation, service reviews are proactively sourced from anyone completing a transaction on the participating retailer’s site. Customers are asked to rate not only the product they have purchased, but also their buying experience – including customer service, delivery time, and whether or not they’d buy again from the retailer. Using Reevoo also enables retailers to clear up any issues on the spot, helping to improve customer satisfaction.

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “Retailers need to engage in meaningful ways with their customers in stores, online and over the phone. Reevoo Reputation allows retailers like Best Buy to be part of the discussion and prove, right there on their site, exactly how highly rated they are for their service and it also enables them to nip in the bud any problems that might occur for the occasional unhappy customer.

“A great reputation allows retailers to switch customer focus away from price and to differentiate themselves on their quality of service – something which Best Buy is already resoundingly known for.”

As with all Reevoo’s social commerce services, partners benefit from Reevoo’s clear independence in the rating process. The Reevoo Mark may be used by retailers and brands across all channels and customer touchpoints, to drive sales online, in-store and offline.

Best Buy recently improved even further its customer service promises. Its price promise and after-sales service commitment – including 24/7 help online and by phone – are examples of how customer service starts at the research stage and doesn’t stop once someone has left the store or the website.

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Notes to editors
1. 81% of online shoppers use reviews in their decision-making process (YouGov 2010).

2. High spenders are more likely to abandon than low spenders with poor online customer service and incomplete/static customer descriptions the key reasons for doing so.
70% of customers said they visit another ecommerce website after abandoning.
90% of consumers abandon an online store whenever they are dissatisfied.
More than 80% of dissatisfied consumers would be less likely to buy or even visit an e-commerce site in the future (all IDC Retail Insights 2010).

About Best Buy and The Carphone Warehouse
In 2006 Best Buy established a partnership with the Carphone Warehouse to bring its business model and mobile phone expertise to the US market under the banner ‘Best Buy Mobile’. Two years later, Best Buy acquired 50% of the Carphone Warehouse’s European and US retail interests for £1.1billion, creating Best Buy Europe. The new venture is designed to accelerate the development of Carphone Warehouse’s retail proposition and to introduce Best Buy stores across Europe, beginning in the UK in spring 2010. For more information go to www.bestbuy.co.uk.

About Best Buy Co., Inc.
With operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, China, Mexico and Turkey, Best Buy is a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and services with a commitment to growth and innovation. The Best Buy family of brands and partnerships collectively generates more than $49 billion in annual revenue and includes brands such as Best Buy; Best Buy Mobile; Audiovisions; The Carphone Warehouse; Future Shop; Geek Squad, Five Star; Magnolia Audio Video; Napster; Pacific Sales; The Phone House; and Speakeasy. Approximately 180,000 employees apply their talents to help bring the benefits of these brands to life for customers through retail locations, multiple call centers and Web sites, in-home solutions, product delivery and activities in our communities. Community partnership is central to the way we do business at Best Buy. In fiscal 2010, we donated $25.2 million to improve the vitality of the communities where our employees and customers live and work. For more information about Best Buy, visit www.bby.com.

Responds to growing demand from European brands and retailers for proven social commerce solutions

In response to rapidly growing demand from retailers and brands for proven social commerce solutions, Reevoo is to accelerate its expansion across Europe. Already Europe’s largest provider of such social commerce solutions and with partners in 14 countries, Reevoo’s social commerce solutions have been shown to boost ecommerce conversion rates for retailers by up to 18%. 64% of companies plan to increase their budgets for on-site social media ratings during 2011*.

Recent research by Reevoo in the UK showed that social commerce content – such as consumer reviews, Facebook, and recommendations from friends and family – is having a huge impact on the consumer purchase journey. For major items, consumers spend an average of just six minutes on a retailer website after researching for at least 24 hours.

Consumers’ faith in social sources of information is now higher than in any alternative: 70% said that recommendations from friends are important, and 62% of people rated consumer reviews as important. This is substantially more than those who rated as important recommendations from the media or shop staff – 35% and 28% respectively.

The proportion of people using their smartphone to research and solicit information is now 38%. 39% of people turn to their social network on Facebook to research and make purchase decisions.

Richard Anson, founder and CEO at Reevoo, said: “The unstoppable rise of social media is fuelling dramatic growth in social commerce and is having a profound influence on the way people do their shopping. Social media affects everything about the way consumers make their purchase: from what to buy, to where to buy it.”

To meet the challenges identified by the research, Reevoo recently launched an extensive new portfolio of social commerce products. The new solutions have been designed to help retailers and brands move beyond product reviews and ratings to address issues of brand, service, engagement, real-time response and post-sales support – in effect, to establish presence and trust across all consumer-brand touchpoints.

Reevoo’s approach to bringing its portfolio of social commerce solutions to marketers across Europe is multi-tracked. The company expects to accelerate its growth by directly signing a broad spectrum of retailers, manufacturers and other brands through proactive marketing of its solutions to a range of vertical market sectors, and by signing agreements with distribution partners that have pan-European reach.

Reevoo’s Richard Anson said: “Marketers are well aware that change is coming, but our research shows clearly just how dramatic that change is. There are grave threats for retailers who fail to respond, but there are also potentially enormous benefits for those who embrace social commerce. The time is therefore right for Reevoo to accelerate its expansion into Europe to help marketers embrace social commerce using Reevoo solutions, and one aspect of our strategy is to give them more than one option in respect of how they do that.”

*Source: Econsultancy, ‘Marketing Budgets 2011’ report, February 2011

Notes to editors

1. For information on why Reevoo is Europe’s leading social commerce company, visit http://b2b.reevoo.com/why-reevoo

2. For sales enquiries, email: sales@reevoo.com or call +44 20 7654 0331.

Major new products help retailers retain influence as the consumer purchase journey increases in sophistication and becomes almost entirely social

Europe’s largest social commerce company, Reevoo, today launched a new suite of products aimed at simplifying social commerce for brands and retailers at a time when, research shows, the size, scale and sophistication of the task is increasing dramatically. Reevoo’s new portfolio enables retailers and brands to move beyond product reviews and ratings to address issues of brand, service, community, engagement, questions, answers and post-sales support – in short, to establish consumer trust at all touchpoints, which leads to increased sales.

Richard Anson, Reevoo’s founder and CEO, said: “Our latest research shows that today’s purchase process is almost entirely social. This is because, before people buy anything, their first thought is to take advice from their family, friends and even from total strangers. And they get this advice from both established and evolving social channels, including consumer reviews and social networks such as Facebook. We already know that invoking social content results in incremental sales, on average delivering an uplift of 18%.

“The impact of consumers attaching the greatest importance to social channels is that control of the shopping process is being taken completely out of the hands of the retailers. Reevoo cannot give that control back to retailers again – that genie is well and truly out of the bottle – but what we can do, and are doing, is give all retailers, big and small, very welcome solutions that enable them to participate in and influence the process again.

“Trust is, by definition, hard to build, easy to lose, and harder still to rebuild once lost. The retailers that proactively build the most trust, win. It’ll always be up to retailers and brands then to do the things that generate trust, such as provide good post-sales service. But our new products enable brands to tell their customers how good they are, and allows consumers to discover and act upon such peer opinions for themselves,” he added.

Anson outlines the new social commerce portfolio in this short video. The new portfolio comprises:

• Reevoo Mark: Reevoo’s original, trusted customer reviews service provides retailers and brands websites with deep, impartial reviews from genuine, verified customers across all their products. Reevoo Mark has been shown to drive an 18% increase in sales for Reevoo partners.

• Reevoo Conversations: this enables brands to embrace the power of the crowd by building a community of real product owners for shoppers to ask questions and get the answers they need to make their purchase decision. It helps brands to move away from a broadcast medium and start to engage in a two-way conversation with customers, while boosting conversion, profitable return visits and customer satisfaction.

• Reevoo Reputation: this enables retailers to gain plaudits and therefore trust for their performance as a retailer. It provides a verified-authentic view of the retailer reputation which brands can use on their own website or across the Web. It ensures a balanced view is portrayed of a retailer’s service, delivery and the environment that it provides to shoppers.

• Reevoo Spark: this product harnesses the power of social content to drive yield and sales through urgency, relevance, recommendations and alerts, and uses the huge amount of information about the social purchase journey over which Reevoo has visibility.

• Reevoo Launch: this service enables brands to get reviews quickly when new products are launched, and even before they hit the shelves, when products are at their most desirable and profitable.

• Reevoo Insight: this is a new breed of market research, which enables retailers and brands to tap into the conversations and customer opinions that exist about their brand and turn them into actionable insight to inform their marketing, sales, procurement, product development and customer support strategies.

In addition to the core new products, Reevoo has also developed several bolt-on ‘catalysts’ to extend the reach and impact of social commerce for brands. Retailers and brands using Reevoo social commerce products generate a huge volume of social content; the Reevoo Catalysts help to make more of the social content they have. The catalysts are:

• Reevoo Traffic: many online retailers that use manufacturers’ stock descriptions of products were hit hard in terms of their search ranking by Google’s recent Panda-Farmer algorithm update, which rewards unique, high-quality content over syndicated content. Reevoo Traffic enables retailers to make the most of social content from a search engine optimisation point of view, to boost their search rankings and drive more shoppers to their site.

• Reevoo Analytics: this is a management dashboard that offers brands and retailers unprecedented levels of insight into the effectiveness of their reviews and social commerce strategy with real-time, actionable analytics. Reevoo Analytics enables retailers to identify less obvious, hidden opportunities, and to ensure that reviews or comments requiring attention receive a rapid response.

• Reevoo Brand Response: this product enables brands and retailers to really get involved in the conversation themselves and engage with their customers, by responding quickly and directly to any issues that are raised in social content.

• Reevoo Broadcast: this is a push-of-the-button service that instantly shares product and service reviews with Reevoo’s network of publishers and comparison shopping engines.

• Reevoo Mobile: this puts trusted social content in the hands – literally – of consumers at key points in the purchase journey. It enables retailers to integrate trusted content into their mobile strategy, transforming social reach, boosting conversions, building loyalty and growing market share.

• Reevoo Offline: consumers have embraced social commerce online and now they demand the same experience offline. Reevoo Offline enables retailers to align online and offline strategies by taking social commerce into their stores, packaging and marketing campaigns.

Richard Anson, Reevoo’s CEO, said: “Taken as a whole, what we’re announcing today is bringing what used to happen 50 years ago back into shopping. Fifty years ago you would have known your shop keeper very well, you would have known your fellow shoppers, been able to ask questions, and known if this was a retailer to use or one to avoid. Today, even though people are disparate and geographically widespread, they are actually becoming much closer via social network platforms… really, the past is becoming the present again.”

Through its proactive collection strategy, Reevoo has collected more than two million impartial pieces of social content from genuine customers; this social commerce content is displayed to shoppers more than half a billion times every month.

Several well-known retailers have already signed up to use products from Reevoo’s new portfolio. Previously published figures from Reevoo’s 120 partners – including Tesco, Best Buy, Jessops and Dixons – show that social commerce solutions generate an average sales uplift of 18%.

[ends]

Notes to editors
See today’s other announcement by Reevoo: Full impact of social sources on the consumer purchase process revealed

About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://b2b.reevoo.com) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo has been deployed by more than 120 major brands including Sony, BestBuy, Tesco and Dixons helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.

Reevoo has solicited more than two million pieces of independent, impartial social content from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to this content to shoppers across the Reevoo network more than half a billion times every month.

Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.

Consumers spend just six minutes of a 24-hour process on a retailer site

Shoppers avoid talking to brands about their products and even dodge the websites of the retailers they will eventually buy from until their decision to purchase has already been made. Instead, on a scale previously unimagined, they do their pre-purchase research by tapping into a variety of social sources including friends and family, consumer reviews and Facebook friends. When they do decide to buy, they spend an average of just six minutes on a retailer website after a purchase journey of 24 hours, according to research commissioned by Europe’s largest social commerce company, Reevoo.

At all stages of the purchase journey, consumers’ faith in social sources of information is now higher than in any alternative: 70% rate friends’ recommendations as important, while 62% of people rate consumer reviews as important – significantly more than those who rate the media, or shop assistants recommendations as important at 35% and 28% respectively.

The research also shows that mobile and Facebook have become the tools of choice for a significant proportion of shoppers. The proportion using their smartphone to research and solicit information – even while physically standing in a bricks-and-mortar outlet – is now 38%, and a further 39% turn to their social network on Facebook to research and make purchase decisions.

Today also sees the launch of Reevoo’s extensive new portfolio of social commerce products, developed in light of these research results to help retailers and brands respond to the changing consumer journey. Reevoo’s new solutions have been designed to help retailers move beyond product reviews and ratings to address issues of brand, service, engagement, real-time response and post-sales support – in effect, to establish presence and trust, far more widely. (See separate announcement, Reevoo expands portfolio to simplify social commerce.)

See here for a short video of Richard Anson, Reevoo CEO and founder, describing the key research findings. These are:
• Participation in the social commerce process is now the norm rather than the exception. 47% of consumers report that they have written a product review, more than those who haven’t.
• Shoppers spend a long time deciding what to buy, with 90% spending at least 24 hours researching a major purchase. However only a fraction of this time – six minutes – is actually spent on retailer product pages, highlighting the need for retailers to engage and influence consumers across the web, offline and on mobile. This increases to 14 minutes for retailers using social content effectively.
• It’s not just what people are buying, but from whom they’re buying that’s important to them. 73% of shoppers will check consumer opinion before buying from an unknown or little-known retailer, with 58% specifically searching online for service reviews before they purchase.
• People have no qualms about publicly using a mobile device to make checks, even in-store. 38% now use their mobiles to help them research and make purchases in some way, with a third using their mobile phones to research product information, read consumer reviews and check prices.
• 39% of people turn to their social network on Facebook to research and make purchase decisions. While buying activities on the social network is still a niche pursuit, it is increasingly popular for the research and recommendation-type activities that typify the early stages of a purchase journey.
• Advertising is no longer relevant. Only 24% of consumers believe that their purchase behaviour is influenced by advertising.
• Product reviews and ratings remain core to the buying process. 87% of shoppers sometimes or always read reviews before making a purchase.
• Good reviews matter, but bad reviews matter more. 69% of consumers trust reviews more when they can see bad reviews as well as good. In fact, 38% are more likely to read the bad reviews than the good ones – but only 5% say they won’t buy a product with bad reviews.
• Additional social information is welcome, with 86% of shoppers using smart recommendations including what others are buying, frequently bought with, or stock levels, to decide what to purchase. Calls-to-purchase based on what shoppers ultimately bought, urgency, stock levels are deemed useful by 64%, 58% and 45% of shoppers respectively.
• In social commerce, independence is cherished. Consumers trust independent reviews more, at 56%, versus reviews collected by brands or retailers themselves, at 19%.

The purchasing behaviour identified in the survey results requires retailers and brands to re-evaluate their social commerce strategies in order to establish consumer trust at key decision points in that journey. Customers will only engage with a retailer who has managed to establish trust earlier in the purchasing journey.

Richard Anson, Reevoo’s CEO and founder, said: “The raw statistics tell some of the story; the rest of our conclusions are drawn from discussions with, and the experiences of, many of our 120 partners. Taken together, we know how the journey has evolved, where the decision points are, and how those decisions are made. What is clear is that no longer can any retailer control the purchase journey – but all retailers are in a position to influence it.”

“Consumers spend a lot of time considering what to buy with 90% spending at least 24 hours researching significant purchases. Yet our analysis shows that only a tiny fraction of that time, just six minutes, is spent at the final stage of purchase on product pages on the retailer or brand’s site – but this more than doubles to 14 minutes for retailers deploying social commerce content effectively,” he continued.

“While it’s vital for retailers to fine-tune their on-site experience to ensure that consumers get what they need to make a purchase, this is no longer enough; retailers need to engage with shoppers everywhere. That means across the web, on social networks, and on Google, as well as offline and on mobile devices,” he added.

For further research details and analysis, download ‘The Reevoo consumer purchasing report, June 2011’ [pdf].

[ends]

Notes to editors
1. This announcement is made in conjunction with today’s announcement by Reevoo of its newly expanded social commerce portfolio: Reevoo expands portfolio to simplify social commerce

2. A Reevoo analysis of 46 retailer websites revealed that consumers spend just six minutes on product pages, rising by over 100% to 14 minutes if social content is used effectively.

3. The consumer survey was carried out on behalf of Reevoo by FlyResearch in March 2011. 1200 people were interviewed.

4. Download ‘The Reevoo consumer purchasing report, June 2011’ [pdf] from http://b2b.reevoo.com/resources/ebooks/consumer-purchasing-report-june-2011?press

About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://b2b.reevoo.com) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo has been deployed by more than 120 major brands including Sony, BestBuy, Tesco and Dixons helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.

Reevoo has solicited more than two million independent, impartial reviews from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to these reviews, displaying more than half a billion reviews to shoppers every month across the Reevoo network.

Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.