Bazaarvoice Concludes Sold-Out Social Commerce Summit 2009

More Than 300 Executives, Managers, and Industry Insiders Gather in Austin to Explore, Measure, and Evolve “The New ROI: Return on Influentials”

Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, today announced the successful conclusion of the second annual Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit U.S. at the AT&T Conference Center at The University of Texas, Austin. The sold-out event brought together more than 300 executives and managers from top retail, manufacturing, travel, and financial services companies to learn how to build and measure the impact of the customer voice in their business. Summit attendees rated the Social Commerce Summit as one of the best events of the year – “an amusement park of ideas” – as they learned from the people who are delivering social commerce success every day for brands like Dell, L.L.Bean, Oriental Trading Company, PETCO, and many others. The stream of Twitter notes with details from the Summit is available here.

“I’m proud to say that I left the Summit with much more clarity about how to succeed with social commerce and build enduring relationships with our customers at JCPenney,” said Richard Last, Vice President, New Business Development – jcp.com, JCPenney and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Shop.org. “The speakers were experts from across industries who openly shared their practical experience and passion for social media. They offered a great mix of strategy and concrete actions to take back to the office. Not only did I learn a lot, I had a great time at this high-energy event, which left plenty of room for networking and fun.”

“We know the voice of other customers is a key consideration when making a purchase,” said Cindy Holker, Vice President, Online Stores Team, BestBuy.com. “The Summit reinforced the value of our Bazaarvoice asset and the opportunities it gives us to bring that voice into the purchase path. I came away with several ideas on how we could better leverage the customer voice to evolve our business.”

Over the course of three days, Summit attendees connected with each other and an all-star roster of speakers to gain new ideas and strategies for integrating the customer voice across all business functions in order to engage customers and accelerate business change. Popular track sessions focused on emerging topics like How UGC Brings Manufacturers and Retailers Together; How to Successfully Leverage UGC Through the Channel; Creating Customer Oxygen; How Social Powers Traditional Marketing; and The Toughest Social Commerce Questions (and Answers) for the C-Level. Attendees also benefited from the insights of thinkers and practitioners who are defining the social category, including:
Jonah Peretti, Co-founder, BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post
Jeffrey Graham, Executive Director, Customer Insight, New York Times
Jill Griffin, Author, Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer
Erin Nelson, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Dell
Ed Keller, CEO, The Keller Fay Group and author, The Influentials
Ze Frank, Designer, speaker & popular video blogger

The Social Commerce Summit also featured the 2nd Annual Social Commerce Awards recognizing the companies that are transforming their businesses with Bazaarvoice. The 2009 award winners include:
Best at Connecting with Contributors – JC Whitney
Best at Generating Content – Sephora
Best at Leveraging Content – Helzberg Diamonds
Best Overall Social Commerce Program – Intuit / Turbo Tax

Other Summit highlights included Sunni Brown graphic recordings of each session and the 2nd Annual Bazaarvoice Mechanical Bull Riding contest, as well as the debut of the “The Influencer Abduction” and “Freedom! ’09 (Let Their Content Free!)” videos. More information on each is available at Bazaarblog.

“Based on Summit attendance and the upbeat nature of the presentations, you’d never know we are in the midst of a recession,” said Jon Nordmark, founder and CEO of eBags.com. “The time I invested in Austin gave me dozens of new contacts from companies as diverse as The New York Times, Timex, and philosophy. I was especially impressed by the Bazaarvoice product roadmap – and the insightful and busy Bazaarvoice team.”

The Social Commerce Summit was proudly sponsored by Bazaarvoice eCommerce partners, including ATG, Baynote, Coremetrics, Endeca, ExactTarget, Experian, Merkle, Omniture, Responsys, Rosetta, and Sapient. All sponsors are members of Radius, Bazaaarvoice’s breakthrough program designed to accelerate the strategic adoption of social commerce by brand marketers, direct marketers, agencies, and technology vendors.

“With travel budgets tight and most conference attendance significantly down, we were absolutely thrilled to host a sell-out crowd in Austin,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “This is a true testament to the strength of our speakers, our clients, our partners, and the transformational power of social commerce. Our clients were transparent in the rapid evolution of their best practices built on social commerce, including integrating customer-generated content throughout their multichannel marketing and merchandising. We’re looking forward to repeating this very successful Summit in London later this year.”

About Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice offers outsourced technology, services, analytics, and expertise to help companies enhance the online shopping experience with social commerce applications that drive sales. Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews™, Ask & Answer™, and Stories™ deliver immediate success by minimizing implementation risk and maximizing the strategic impact of user-generated content through complete customization, deep integration, community management, advanced analytics, search engine optimization, and syndication across the Web and to offline channels. Bazaarvoice was named one of the Best Places to Work in Austin in 2007 and 2008, and also received the ClickZ Marketing Innovation of the Year award in 2006 and 2008. Bazaarvoice currently serves over 350 eCommerce leaders including Borders, Dell, Macy’s, Office Depot, Inc., Overstock.com, PETCO, P&G, QVC, Sears, and ZipRealty. The company has headquarters in Austin, TX and offices in London, Paris, and Singapore. For more information, please visit the company’s Web site at www.bazaarvoice.com, read the blog at www.bazaarblog.com, or email info {at} bazaarvoice(.)com.

Contacts

Bazaarvoice
Renee Newby, 757-651-6554
renee {at} bradypr(.)com