Bazaarvoice Launches Competitive Insights to Give Brands an Unparalleled Understanding of the Consumer Decision Process

AUSTIN, Texas, June 3, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bazaarvoice, Inc. BV, the network connecting brands and retailers to the authentic voices of consumers wherever they shop, today announced the launch of Bazaarvoice Competitive Insights, a consumer analytics tool to help brands better understand the factors that drive consumer decisions at the point of purchase. Using consumer-generated content (CGC) and session data from Bazaarvoice's global retail network, Competitive Insights informs brands with a unique and comprehensive view of the competitive dynamics for hundreds of product categories such as Apparel, Health & Beauty, Consumer Product Goods, Consumer Electronics, Home Improvement, and Appliances. The intelligence can be used to spot consumer trends, launch new products, market more efficiently, and capture market share.

Primary research, syndicated research, and social listening provide indicators around consumer shopping behavior but don't ultimately reveal, at scale, why consumers decide on one product versus another at the exact point of purchase. Bazaarvoice Competitive Insights closes this gap by combining consumer session and sentiment data with intricate product matching capabilities and sophisticated analytics to provide a detailed view into:

• The market landscape: analyze data associated with page views, review volume, and other statistics to understand how market trends are impacting a brand and how it ranks relative to competitors.
• Brand consideration: see how often consumers are considering an individual brand, multiple brands, or not considering a brand at all within a shopping session, as well as which products are most commonly considered alongside specific brands.
• Competitors' benchmarks: within client-defined competitive sets, deep dive into benchmarks such as average rating and share of review voice to know when competitors are slipping or pinpoint trends that indicate a change in consumer behavior.
• Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)-level product comparisons: examine data points such as review count, page views, rating distribution, and average rating—along with key snippets from positive and negative reviews—in side-by-side comparisons with competitors to identify a brand's true differentiating features, key issues and complaints, or what new products consumers want to see in the market.
• Consumer sentiment: unearth brand and product-specific sentiment data and thematic nuances to determine how well a brand's message is resonating with consumers, what factors ultimately influenced their purchase decision, and where a brand has opportunities to unseat competitors.

"As one of the world's largest networks of shopping-specific consumer generated content, we have an unmatched ability to see how the connections between people, brands, and retailers are impacting the market in near real-time," said Michael Paulson, executive vice president of Product at Bazaarvoice. "Bazaarvoice Competitive Insights unlocks the value of these relationships. Companies that embrace and share authentic CGC hold more sway over the consumer decision-making process, and those that also derive insight from CGC will be better positioned to focus more acutely on the needs of their customers and capitalize on quickly changing market demands."

Competitive Insights is a new product offering available to any brand that sells through multiple retailers within the Bazaarvoice network, including those that are not currently a client of the Bazaarvoice Conversations platform. However, Conversations clients can include their own ratings and review data for a more robust view of consumer sentiment around their brand. Brands can choose from several hundred pre-identified market categories, or create a customized category containing related competitive product SKUs within a specific vertical market. Competitive Insights market reports surface the most important and actionable insights and trends. In addition, each brand that subscribes to the Competitive Insights product will be partnered with an experienced Bazaarvoice market research consultant who will provide a comprehensive breakdown of the data and identify related opportunities and strategies.

Competitive Insights is currently available to brands in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Support for additional geographies will be announced as they become available. For more information on Bazaarvoice Competitive Insights, please visit http://www.bazaarvoice.com/competitive-insights/.

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice powers a network that connects brands and retailers to the authentic voices of people where they shop. Each month, more than 700 million people view and share authentic opinions, questions, and experiences about tens of millions of products in the Bazaarvoice network. The company's technology platform amplifies these voices into the places that influence purchase decisions. Network analytics help marketers and advertisers provide more engaging experiences that drive brand awareness, considerations, sales and loyalty. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Bazaarvoice has offices across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. For more information, visit http://www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarvoice.com/blog, and follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bazaarvoice.