-eBay adds marketplace listings to recently acquired bar code scanning app. From Internet Retailer, “EBay today added product listings from the eBay marketplace as well as its Half.com marketplace—which sells books, textbooks, music, movies, video games, and video game consoles—to the app and also added two-dimensional bar code scanning capabilities.”
-Cataloger provides personalized offer. Yesterday I received a catalog from Chadwicks (a Boston Apparel Group company), with a personalized offer. OK, I’m not going to go into why I get a Chadwicks catalog, but it’s pretty easy to guess. Anyways, the cover said “Wait, don’t say good-bye just yet…I’ve noticed you haven’t been shopping with Chadwicks for a while, and I want to let you know that we miss you!” The copy went on to point out lots of positive things about Chadwicks and then notified me that it might be the last catalog I receive. It ended with a ‘Bonus Coupon!’ for a Free Item with any purchase. Just think this is a smart move. I know that everyone personalizes these days, but I’d never seen a notice like this before.
-Search NexTag within Google Search. I just find this strange. Why would Google put a NexTag search box on the SERP?
-BazaarVoice picks up another Dell exec to run marketing. As most of you know, Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice will be moving on soon. If you don’t know Sam, you should. He’s a great guy.
But it looks like another Dell exec, current CMO, Erin Nelson, will pick up where Sam leaves off. Forbes covers the story with the following questions:
Can you elaborate a bit more on Bazaarvoice and its potential?
Bazaarvoice has experienced tremendous growth in an exploding space. Social (media and commerce) for us now is like the Internet was 10 years ago. Bazaarvoice brings the power of ratings, reviews and brand stories to companies. It works with 950 brands, including Procter & Gamble, Best Buy and Sephora. Dell has been a customer for four-and-a-half years. They manage our ratings and review platform. We have been committed to this and found it very effective. We have products on site that customers provide feedback on. It has changed the way we do product development. It has gotten us closer to what customers really need. There are a lot of people happy with what they do. They are so close to the commerce transaction that it’s easy to demonstrate ROI.
The plan is for Bazaarvoice to go public, right?
It’s something (Bazaarvoice Founder and CEO) Brett Hurt and the executive team would like to see happen in the next couple of years.
How did this opportunity for you come about?
The world is really small. My [sons] are 7 and 10. [My husband and I] wanted to figure out where were we were going to be for the next 12 years. I’m CMO of Dell. It’s the job I aspired to have. I don’t know that I would find another 12 years of as much growth and change at Dell as I would at a small and growing company.
Brett [the CEO of Bazaarvoice] and I ended up having dinner together in the middle of August and just had a chat about what was important to him and what was important to me. It felt like this serendipitous match. I spent a couple of days with his executive team we quickly realized it was a good match for both of us.
-Shopping Engines looking for help with Mobile.
NexTag is looking for a Mobile Product Manager.
TheFind is looking for a Iphone / Ipad Developer, Android Developer.
Google is looking for a Product Marketing Manager, Google Commerce (initiatives can range from Google Product Search to mobile initiatives, such as Google Shopper for Android).
-Google on Mobile. If you didn’t hear, Google had a great quarter. In the earnings call (courtesy of Seeking Alpha), there was a quick Q&A on mobile as it relates to retailers:
Jason Maynard – Wells Fargo
Okay. And then just maybe a follow-up for Nikesh. When you think about mobile advertising, maybe just sort of help me frame, where do you think advertisers are at in their lifecycle of actually committing dollars to spend in this medium and form factor?
Nikesh Arora
I think the important part to understand on the mobile space is that the reason the billion dollar number is an interesting number is that just means that now the larger advertisers can get more interested, because we can help them spend reasonable amounts of money. It’s very hard to go and make a pitch to a large advertiser when the maximum inventory that you can offer them is in the five to 10 or $50,000 range, especially with advertisers who got $100 million or $200 million advertising budgets. So, to get them interested – if they get interested, they would like to be able to deploy reasonable amounts of money against this market.
So, the part I am excited about is that the inventory continues to grow. There is diversity in formats. People are interested in search-based advertising. People are interested in display-based advertising. They want to be in the middle of applications and get customer engagement. So we are seeing sort of reasonable broad-based interest. Clearly, the early adopters are people who can actually consummate a transaction. So, insurance services want a click-to-call, they want to be able to pitch, they want the customer to be able to pick up the phone and call them. There are now people who are in the local space, who want the customer to come to their restaurant. They want the customer to come show up, where they are offering a local service. So, that interest is going up.
Now the retailers who actually are interested when you are looking for a local J. C. Penney or RadioShack that, if we can tell you where it is and they can actually click and find out where it is. So, the interest continues to grow as you look at the local categories, as you look at the click-to-call categories. And as Jonathan said, as payment capabilities start getting bills into the phone, you will start seeing even more of an interest from the e-commerce players.
-MyPerfectSale acquired by Sugar Inc. From the release (via PaidContent), “Sugar Inc.’s acquisition will accelerate the growth of MyPerfectSale in the U.S. and enable it to expand into international markets where Sugar Inc. currently operates, including the UK, Japan, France, Germany and Australia. MyPerfectSale will be maintained as a separate brand while becoming a part of Sugar Inc.’s ShopStyle network of shopping sites. MyPerfectSale’s eight employees will join the growing Sugar Inc. team.”
Posted by Brian Smith 
