Social Merchandising
Complete Product Research for Shoppers
PowerReviews’ tag-based approach to reviews enables a much broader use of customer feedback in the total shopping experience, providing customer-generated guidance for shoppers as they find, compare and decide on the right product for them.
PowerReviews adds confidence at each step in the shopping process
PowerReviews offers tools to assist shoppers at each stage in their shopping research process:
Find → Social Navigation™
Social Navigation uses the authentic input from real users to help shoppers narrow down the product selection early in the shopping process. Shoppers can narrow by pros, cons, and best uses that users submitted in customer reviews; e.g. narrow down coffee makers based on “easy to use” and “quick brewing”, two pros listed in its “Consumers Speak” navigation bar.
Compare → Review Snapshots™
Shoppers can quickly assess the consensus of customer feedback on a product using “at-a-glance” Review Snapshots™ that list the most often cited pros, cons and best uses from all the customer reviews. No longer will shoppers need to read through dozens of reviews to find out why a product got the rating it did. The Keynote Systems study found that “consumers prefer PowerReviews 2-to-1 over Amazon reviews for making informed purchase decisions” largely because of the increased speed and confidence offered by Review Snapshots™.
Decide → Affinity Recommendations™
Affinity Recommendations empower shoppers with product recommendations from people just like them. Shoppers first select the buying personality - or “affinity group” - that best describes them, and get recommendations from other people from that same affinity group. For example, if shopping for a digital camera, photo enthusiasts can quickly see recommendations from other photo enthusiasts, and casual photographers can see recommendations from other casual photographers. This ensures that photo enthusiasts don’t buy cameras that are below their performance requirements and casual photographers don’t find themselves with cameras they can’t operate. As a result, Affinity Recommendations help customers find exactly the right product for their specific needs and uses, giving them confidence in their decision and satisfaction with the product they choose.
Affinity Reviews
Similarly, Affinity Reviews help shoppers make a final product decision and validate that decision with reviews that are from the same affinity group as them. Instead of making decisions based the overall rating from all reviewers, affinity reviews enable shoppers to get the rating and detailed evaluation from people just like them, which is often quite different from the overall reviewer group. In the photographer example, a high rating from the overall group on a point-and-shoot camera may lead a photo enthusiast to actually make the wrong decision. Affinity Reviews would prevent this and ensure a good match with that shopper’s lifestyle and usage needs.
Customer Insight Reporting for Merchandisers
In addition to directly assisting shoppers, PowerReviews produces On-Demand Customer Insight reports for merchandisers with up-to-the-minute analysis of consumer preferences, customer vernacular and product best uses. Merchandisers can then drive higher conversion and better customer experience through:
- Merchandising copy that incorporate authentic benefits and uses to consumers
- Assortment decisions based on customer satisfaction
- Product feedback to manufacturers
We call the use of Social Navigation, Review Snapshots, Affinity Reviews and On-Demand Customer reporting “Social Merchandising”, a trend that we believe will become a key part of customer-centric merchandising going forward.
