Bazaarvoice Stages New Era of Digital Collaboration Between Brands and Retailers With Bazaarvoice Connections

Bazaarvoice Connections Enables Companies to Directly Engage Consumers on the Web Sites Where Their Products and Services Are Sold

World's Largest Retailers, Including The Home Depot and Walmart Canada, Join Forces With Bazaarvoice to Market Bazaarvoice Connections to a Combined Supplier Base of More Than 5,000 Brands

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 17, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bazaarvoice BV today unveiled the newest edition of its Bazaarvoice Connections offering, marking a new era of brand and retail collaboration. Bazaarvoice Connections breaks new ground by allowing brands to participate in conversations happening about their products or services on retail and shopping sites. Retailers now can leverage their suppliers' unique product expertise and passion to create an exceptional online shopping experience that increases traffic and revenue both on sites and in stores. An overview of Connections is available in this video.

Designed to better serve the omni-channel consumer, Bazaarvoice Connections allows retailers to remove information gaps that inhibit purchases by connecting brands to consumers at the point of research and purchase. According to a study published by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 84 percent of consumers now research online before making a purchase – either online or in stores.

Brands ranging from consumer packaged goods to consumer electronics, appliances to beauty and apparel can answer questions, respond to reviews, and make purchase recommendations on the retail sites where their customers research and buy. Connections also serves industries beyond traditional retail; hotels can engage with consumers in online travel agency sites, and restaurants can respond to reviews on national reservation and review sites.

"We are always looking for new ways to put the customer at the center of everything we do at The Home Depot," said Hal Lawton, President of Online at The Home Depot. "Bazaarvoice gives us an easy way to leverage our suppliers to provide the information that our customers need as they research and make purchases. By enabling a direct relationship between the brand and the consumer, Bazaarvoice Connections allows us to reduce returns and increase sales, while furthering our value to the customer and their shopping experience."

"Brand presence at the moment of online research, discovery and point of purchase has never been more critical for the consumer shopping experience," said Christopher Ray, Director of Digital Marketing for LG Electronics USA. "Bazaarvoice Connections brings us together with our retail partners to deliver a seamless omni-channel experience based on consumer value. This is a tremendous differentiator – and it's already showing strong results as we approach the important holiday selling season for appliances and TVs."

Bazaarvoice Connections helps retailers and participating suppliers drive higher sales conversion, reduce return rates, and gain product improvement insights. With brand voices contributing to consumer conversations on company sites, the volume of searchable, SEO-rich content multiplies, bringing new customers to sites.

The world's leading retailers are lining up behind Bazaarvoice Connections to encourage their suppliers to engage directly with consumers as they ready their sites for the critical Holiday 2012 season. Bazaarvoice recently completed co-marketing agreements with Walmart Canada and several other retailers. These agreements extend Bazaarvoice Connections to a combined base of more than 5,000 brands, giving them a powerful voice in the online conversations taking place about their products and forever changing the consumer experience in the new digital marketplace.

"The $12 trillion retail channel is undergoing a tremendous transformation as the online, social, and in-store experiences collide," said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. "Through our extensive retail client network, Bazaarvoice reaches one of the largest consumer audiences available to brands today. Bazaarvoice Connections builds and bundles crucial consumer engagement activities into a SaaS solution that allows brands to connect directly with consumers as they research and shop on the largest retail sites in the world. This is one of the many ways that we unlock the value of our network for retailers, brands, and consumers."

Bazaarvoice Connections: How it Works

• Brands receive alerts when new user-generated content occurs about their products on retail or shopping sites.
• They then access a web portal to answer questions, respond to reviews and make recommendations that are published with their brand logo – critical for authenticity and credibility with consumers.
• Through the portal, brands receive a categorized overview of Q&A and reviews on their products, making it simple to prioritize by urgency.
• Following brand input, the consumer is prompted to return to the retail site to view the answer – and many times this drives the purchase.

Additional Resources

• An overview video is available on YouTube.
• More information and sales information is available here.
• Follow @Bazaarvoice on Twitter or visit www.bazaarvoice.com

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice brings the voice of customers to the center of business strategy, transforming business performance for nearly 2,000 clients globally, including over half of the Internet Retailer 500 list of the world's largest retailers, more than one-third of the Fortune 500, and over 20 percent of the Fortune 100 brands. Bazaarvoice social software helps clients like Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Macy's, P&G, Panasonic, QVC, Travelocity, and USAA create social communities on their brand websites and Facebook pages where customers can engage in conversations. These conversations can be syndicated across Bazaarvoice's global network of client websites and mobile devices, making the user-generated content that digital consumers trust accessible at multiple points of purchase. Through Bazaarvoice, manufacturers can also connect directly with consumers on retail sites to answer questions and respond to reviews about their products. The social data derived from online word of mouth translates into actionable insights that improve marketing, sales, customer service, and product development. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Bazaarvoice has offices in Amsterdam, London, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Stockholm, and Sydney. For more information, visit www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarvoice.com/blog, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.

The Bazaarvoice logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=13784