Holiday Shoppers Read Online Ratings and Reviews Before Shopping in Stores

Austin, TX – November 28, 2007 – Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today announced that holiday shoppers are increasingly turning to online ratings and reviews to research their offline purchases. Bazaarvoice data showed a significant increase in ratings and reviews activity for the week of November 19 – 26, 2007, with usage spiking on Thanksgiving evening as shoppers prepared for a busy Black Friday. Bazaarvoice served more than 1,400 ratings and reviews per second at the peak, which occurred at 9:25 pm EST on Thursday, November 22.

“For many Americans, Thanksgiving evening is a time to study circulars and plan your Friday shopping strategy,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “Our data shows that a new tradition is taking hold: opening the Web browser to read reviews online before shopping in the stores. This new data point, along with our recent research with the Keller Fay Group that shows that two-thirds of shoppers post online reviews about their offline purchases, is a strong indicator that the crossover between the online and offline shopping experience has become a retail reality in 2007.”

Bazaarvoice also served over 71 million ratings and reviews on Cyber Monday, November 26, up 370% from the 19 million served on Cyber Monday last year. Cyber Monday activity peaked at over 1,300 ratings and reviews served per second at 1:40 pm EST and held strong until 11:00 pm EST. Bazaarvoice expects usage to remain high through the remainder of the holiday shopping season.

“We anticipated a large number of ratings and reviews for Cyber Monday,” said Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice. “Research from Shop.org and MarketingSherpa shows that review usage has nearly doubled in the US over the last year. We served more than three times as many ratings and reviews as we did last year, highlighting consumers’ increased reliance on reviews and the increased number of retail sites with review content hosted by Bazaarvoice.”

Data was collected across more than 100 online retailers, including some of the largest multichannel retailers in the world. Bazaarvoice clients include Bass Pro Shops, CompUSA, Dell, Macy’s, PETCO, QVC and Sears. A more comprehensive client list is available at http://bazaarvoice.com/clients.html.