Both Barrels Communications Ltd

Reevoo publishes evidence-based proof

When it comes to social commerce, bad product reviews are good for business according to data from social commerce company Reevoo. Sixty-eight per cent of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores, while 30% suspect censorship or faked reviews when they don’t see bad scores. Shoppers who go out of their way to read bad reviews convert 67% more highly than the average consumer.

Three times as many consumers actively seek out and read negative user generated content as look for positive content: negative reviews are even more popular than “most recent reviews”, or “reviews from people like me”. Shoppers who seek out bad reviews are highly engaged with their pre-purchase research, viewing almost four times as many products as the average visitor to a site, and staying considerably longer.

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “Consumers who seek out negative reviews outperform the average visitor to a website: we see a 67% bump in conversion rates for these shoppers. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, negative user-generated content is actually one of the most effective conversion tools,” he added.

The balance between positive and negative comments that a brand or retailer attracts varies according to whether a proactive or passive reviews strategy is employed. Download Reevoo’s ebook for more information on proactive/passive strategies and why bad reviews are good for business.

Notes to editors
Figures quoted are from data collected across Reevoo’s network of 150 UK and international partners and from Reevoo.com, the company’s consumer website, as well as from independent consumer surveys.

New figures reveal rapid adoption of social in consumer shopping behaviours

The astonishing speed with which the consumer purchase journey is becoming social is revealed today by new figures from social commerce company Reevoo. The company has just repeated a tranche of research first conducted in March 2011, with results showing that the reliance on social sources – including friends and consumer reviews – is increasing rapidly by almost every measure and, intriguingly, across all age-groups.

Among the key trends identified are:

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “In repeating this research so soon after we first conducted it, we hoped to identify the rate at which the consumer purchase journey is becoming social, and the speed at which it is becoming an accepted part of our shopping lives. The results have certainly confirmed our view that it is, indeed, a rapid process, and that it is a phenomenon that is touching and changing the behaviour of all age-groups.

“We have said for some time how vital it is that marketers who have so far ignored social commerce need to look at it very seriously, now. Many brands are translating these social changes into revenue, while those that don’t will be left behind – and now we can see just how fast they might be receding into the distance.”

Reevoo’s latest research, undertaken on its behalf by Fly Research, contains extensive insights into current consumer behaviour as it relates to social commerce, the social web, and shopping behaviour. Download an ebook detailing all key findings and trends.

Notes to editors
Both surveys were carried out on behalf of Reevoo by Fly Research, in March 2011 and again in September 2011. In excess of 1000 nationally representative UK consumers were questioned for each survey.

And 22% don’t measure their return on investment from social commerce at all

One-fifth of marketers don’t measure their return on investment from social commerce projects, a survey of marketers conducted for Reevoo has revealed. Among marketers measuring ROI for social, one-third report positive return on investment, with just one in 25 respondents claiming they have experienced negative ROI.

Despite the opportunity for precise measurement of the business impact of social commerce, the survey shows that just one-third of marketers measures impact in terms of increased sales or order values, while one in 10 makes no attempt to measure success at all. Many marketers still rely on traditional metrics such as traffic, page views or returning customer rates to measure social commerce performance, or put their faith in quite rudimentary or arbitrary figures such as the number of fans, followers or contributors, or mentions on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Nonetheless, 43% of all respondents say they can tie some percentage of their revenues back to social commerce initiatives. Read the rest of the survey results

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “These figures suggest that there’s more confusion about measuring ROI for social commerce than there should be, or needs to be. For example, we calculate and attribute accurate, data-backed statistics for our clients including conversion rate improvements, increased average order value and repeat visitor uplift – knowledge of which makes it quite straightforward to calculate whether a project is generating a positive ROI. And, on average, the sales uplift is 18%, which is a great way to demonstrate the performance of social commerce.”

But these figures suggest this isn’t always obvious to marketers, and there even appears to be some confusion and polarisation of views, so as an industry we’re clearly going to have to look at ways of communicating this better. With 54% of marketers planning to increase their social commerce budgets in 2012, you can bet that social commerce projects will attract ever more scrutiny, so demonstrable ROI measurements to track and report on performance will become increasingly important,” he added.

Notes to editors
Research conducted for Reevoo in October 2011 with 152 marketing professionals. Download the survey report.

Reevoo Social Reach enables brands to tap into the 38% of consumers who use Facebook as a shopping tool

Social commerce company Reevoo today announced the addition to its portfolio of advanced new social features to enable brands to benefit from the rapidly increasing importance of the social web as a source of trusted shopping advice.

New research shows that 38% of consumers use Facebook as a shopping tool and that 74% of shoppers are influenced by their friends’ recommendations. In fact, more than half of consumers are more influenced by a friend’s review than by a stranger’s review.

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “By combining impartial advice from the two most trusted sources – verified customers and friends – brands can unlock the full potential of social commerce to deliver increased sales and long-term brand loyalty.”

Sean Emmett, Marketing and E-commerce Director at Jessops, said: “Reevoo’s new social functionality drives real customer engagement by letting our customers chat with their friends about their shopping choices just as they would if they were out together in a store. We’re now offering our customers a pretty much personalised shopping experience, and we believe this will help boost our conversion rates even further.”

The new functionality of Reevoo Social Reach boosts traffic and sales through a combination of enhanced trust, greater brand awareness and improved customer engagement using a variety of mechanisms including:

Review sharing – allowing consumers to easily share their reviews on Facebook, Twitter and via email to intensify the positive word of mouth about a brand
Ask Facebook friends – amplifying conversations about a brand by letting shoppers post their product or service questions to Facebook for their friends to follow and answer
Fan acquisition – engage existing customers and drive longer term relationship by offering timely invitations to ‘Like’ and follow a brand’s social media channels, turning reviewers into loyal repeat customers
Instant personalisation – customising each customer’s individual shopping experience on a brand’s site by highlighting reviews from a consumers’ social circle and information from Facebook profiles.
Enhanced social validation – increasing the credibility of social content by letting consumers link their Facebook profile to their ratings and conversations.
On-site social integration – integrate ‘Like’ or ‘Want’ Facebook buttons across a site to drive greater social reach for products and services

Notes to editors
38% of consumers use Facebook as a shopping tool. 74% of shoppers are influenced by their friends’ recommendations. Source: Fly Research, September 2011, n=1016

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.