Opinion Research Corporation released the results from a new study that (again) supports the fact consumer reviews play a major role in the decision to purchase products and services.
In their own words, “A whopping eighty-three percent of respondents polled indicated that online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on purchasing [...]

Andy Sernovitz is a Bazaarvoice Advisory Board member and the founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)*. Andy is also a fellow Wharton grad, the author of Word of Mouth Marketing, a serial entrepreneur, and a prominent keynote speaker at many conferences, including our own Social Commerce Summit.
I was happy to see [...]

Mary Meeker writes one of my favorite trends report each year, Morgan Stanley's Technology Trends.  This makes for great weekend reading.  It gives you both a US and global perspective on the trends most affecting the technology industry broadly, primarily from a B2C perspective.  It has already been forwarded to me by many of the [...]

Early this week Christian Carlsson, IBM Site Architect, wrote about IBM’s new Blue Business Platform for Small and Medium Businesses.  In his words, “the Blue Business Platform is a marketplace where IBM partners and software developers can market and sell their solutions online to small and mid-size companies across the globe.”  The plan is [...]

With the explosive growth of international markets, Bazaarvoice has expanded the Client Services team overseas starting with their first Community Manager, focused on the needs of its UK and European clients. Anna Skaya, our International Community Manager, gives us a quick look into the growing UK online community.

by Anna Skaya, International Community Manager
Londoners are [...]

I’ll warn you upfront that this is my most personal post on this blog and may not have much to do with the word-of-mouth industry.  I would argue, however, that it has a lot to do with the mindset of consumers.  And, of course, they carry word-of-mouth.  You decide, should you decide to read on.
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Last week, Hitwise released new data on the increasing popularity of online question-and-answer sites, such as Yahoo Answers, the market leader.  While Yahoo Answers has seen its market share drop from 94% to 74% due to the growth of competing Q&A sites like WikiAnswers, Answerbag.com, and Amazon.com's Askville,  U.S. traffic to Q&A sites overall more [...]

Yesterday's edition of the always informative eMarketer newsletter featured new information on the enormous influence the Web wields over the offline economy.  The title of this post says it all.  eMarketer's Multi-Channel Retailing report found that online product research by "Precision Shoppers" is driving far more sales in the offline world than online.  By eMarketer's [...]

Browsing Yahoo! Movies this morning, I noticed that the most helpful review on the new 'Rambo' movie is a rant on critics.  This review currently appears at the top, as 'most helpful' is the default sort for Yahoo!'s customer reviews.  When you read this review, you will notice that it is virtually "content free", telling [...]

The Social Commerce industry hit another major tipping point this holiday season.  Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has begun the process of integrating user-generated content into their stores.  There are three integration points so far (see the bottom of this post for screenshots), with undoubtedly more to come:

Store merchandise receipts: encouraging customers to write [...]