Bazaarvoice Announces Six Social Commerce Award Winners at Third Annual U.S. Social Commerce Summit

Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today announced the successful conclusion of its third annual U.S. Social Commerce Summit in Austin, the company’s fifth Social Commerce Summit to date. More than 400 attendees joined Bazaarvoice at the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center at the University of Texas to learn from the companies who are innovating new ways to turn social into measurable business results – and connect with each other around proven strategies and techniques they are using to drive their business forward every day. Thousands more followed the event on Twitter (#scs10) and live video, getting immediate access to key learnings and the first look at an industry-first partnership between Google and Bazaarvoice announced on stage by Google’s Sameer Samat. At the Summit, Bazaarvoice also unveiled the six 2010 Social Commerce Award winners in five categories: Customer Oxygen (Dell), Social Commerce Play of the Year (Samsung), Social Commerce Rockstar (Nike), Social Commerce MVP (Best Buy Co., Inc.), and Rookie of the Year (Blue Shield of California, Roots Canada).

“Amazing changes happen when you give your customers a voice: other customers buy with confidence; their comments shape the product and brand in real time; and brands then sell more by building trust and becoming more authentic,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “This year’s U.S. Social Commerce Summit assembled an amazing group of social commerce stars who are driving these transformations for some of the biggest companies in the world and setting the standard for innovation and execution of proven social commerce strategies that deliver results. It is very exciting to join these thought leaders and executives as social commerce steps into the mainstream with validation from companies like Google and hundreds of repeatable success stories shared at the Summit and captured in hundreds, if not thousands, of case studies, presentations, tweets, and blog posts.”

Announcing the 2010 Social Commerce Award Winners

The 2010 Social Commerce Awards recognize the companies who are using consumer-generated content in new and innovative ways to change their businesses. Bazaarvoice’s Client Success Directors each nominated their best clients for the awards, and the 2010 award winners include:

• Customer Oxygen: Dell: Dell uses the customer voice to help people in the buying process atdell.com via use of a 5-Star measurement system and strives for the highest customer ratings across all products. Starting in November 2006, Dell began using Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews and now utilizes its functionality in more than 62 countries in 14 languages. Dell’s product development and marketing teams analyze both the positive and negative review feedback to help drive continuous improvement into Dell’s products and the customer experience overall. Customers seem pleased and engaged with the ratings and reviews features at dell.com; in fact nearly 90% of customers who rate products on Dell.com would recommend them to a friend or colleague. Dell features some individual reviews as “customer spotlights” which are seen directly in the purchase path to help shoppers easily find the best products based on consumers who are most like them. This innovative feature is making the shopping experience unique and the purchase decision-making process easier.

• Social Commerce Play of the Year: Samsung: Samsung, long known for their innovative products, is a social pioneer who understands the value of engaging their online customers. They were the first to implement BrandAnswers, an innovative product that allows them to answer consumer-generated questions across Bazaarvoice’s network of retail sites. Samsung has branded their answers with a personality (Mr. and Mrs. Samsung), forging an industry best practice that delivered big returns for the business. The company has found that Samsung answers correlate with a 96% increase in product views, and whenever they answered questions, the number of questions doubles, suggesting that their brand engagement influenced an increase in their community’s engagement.

• Social Commerce Rockstar: Nike: Nike understands that success must be measured, and they are on the cutting edge of impact measurement of Ratings & Reviews. Because of the results they have seen, Nike has expanded their social commerce reach by allowing shoe designers to write inspirational Stories through their NikeID platform and continuing to expand across multiple divisions and brands.

• Social Commerce MVP: Best Buy Co., Inc: Best Buy has successfully created and executed an ambitious and comprehensive social strategy that focuses on connecting customers with each other in the way they prefer. This includes Twitter, forums, mobile site, Facebook, eCommerce site, and in store. The Social Commerce MVP award acknowledges the company for its innovative use of a full suite of Bazaarvoice products on BestBuy.com, including Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answers, SearchVoice, BrandVoice, and BrandAnswers. Reviews and top-rated products are marketed in email, on site, and in their weekly store circulars. Best Buy stores feature Fact Tags on the TV wall that showcase the average star rating and number of reviews with a call to action to text for more information. Texts are returned with a link to the m.bestbuy.com site which features product info and reviews. Best Buy is also the first Bazaarvoice client to collect reviews on their stores, and store managers are held accountable for taking action to improve based on the feedback.

• Rookie of the Year (Retail): Roots Canada: Roots was engaged from the start and saw the potential of UGC to impact their overall business. Over the past year, the company has launched Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, Stories, and Mobile Voice, devising innovative contests that span their web site and social networks to make customers aware of the new capabilities and thenfeaturing this content over a variety of social channels. Roots has also broken new ground in measuring social commerce ROI with a proven web analytics integration for maximum insight.

• Rookie of the Year (New Verticals): Blue Shield of California: Blue Shield is pioneering social commerce and setting industry firsts in health care with the launch of Ratings & Reviews (January 2010) and Ask & Answer (April 2010). Blue Shield of California members can share their candid feedback on different plans, and potential members can easily browse these reviews to help choose the right plan for their needs. Members can also ask and respond to specific questions on health topics such as allergies, diet/food/nutrition, women’s health, first aid, and more.

“The overwhelming theme at this year’s Summit was that marketing and advertising have changed forever in today’s social landscape,” said Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice. “The Social Commerce Summit Award winners are the companies who deeply understand this shift and are driving a new way of doing business. We’re very honored to work with these companies to continue to innovate this new social commerce model as it delivers proven results and powers real business transformation.”

Social Commerce Summit 2010 Recap

Summit attendees once again ranked the Summit as one of the best events of its kind and the best Summit yet, as they learned from deep dives into social commerce by the practitioners and thinkers moving the industry forward, including an amazing assortment of speakers including Bazaarvoice leadership; authors like Mitch Joel and Douglas Rushkoff; thought leaders like Kelley Mooney and Ben McConnell; and the executives driving transformation at adidas, Argos, BestBuy.com, Dell, Golfsmith, HP, Ice.com, Intuit, Lending Tree, Nationwide, OfficeMax, USAA, and Urban Outfitters. The new format mixed general sessions with fluid roundtables to encourage new connections and more intimate conversations.

Bazaarvoice continued to live up to its reputation for mixing in fun and throwing a great party, unveiling the hilarious Real Marketing Genius videos and mixing great food, mechanical bull rides, live music mixed with human Tesla coils for an astounding party at the Mexican American Cultural Center.

The Social Commerce Summit was proudly sponsored by Bazaarvoice eCommerce partners, including Platinum sponsor Google; Gold sponsors ATG, ExactTarget, Experian CheetahMail, Responsys, Rosetta and Sapient; and Silver sponsors Coremetrics, Endeca, IBM WebSphere Commerce, Omniture, and RichRelevance. The next Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit will take place in London at the British Film Institute IMAX theater on October 6, 2010.