Comparison Shopping Engine Strategies

Thoughts from Shop.org keynote - Borders CEO George Jones

(This post is from Jennifer who is the Product Manager for ShoppingAdvisor and attending Shop.org's annual summit today)

Blogging live from the Shop.org Annual Summit 08 in Las Vegas.  Today the Shop.org conference opened with a keynote from Borders President & CEO George Jones speaking to the strategies his company has taken on relaunching and expanding their presence online.  While Borders new site strategy is interesting and appropriate in our current “social media marketing” online society, I was more intrigued by how Shop.org kicked off the conference. 

Prior to Mr. Jones taking the stage, the conference organizers showed a short video montage highlighting the “voice of the customer” speaking to their shopping trends in this challenging economy. There were some key themes repeated by the many of the consumer’s comments; specifically I heard phrases such as “compare prices”, “coupons”, “cash back”, and “high gas prices” over and over again.  You may not immediately equate these sentiments with comparison shopping engines, but I do.  What I think the consumers are saying is that their pocketbooks are being squeezed and with an increase in the cost of living, especially gas, they must be more conscious of every dollar.  They are looking for retailers who can give them low prices and are interested in shopping without driving (or at least with sites that offer shipping that is less than it would cost to drive and pick it up).  This leads me to believe the importance of internet retailers in the average consumer’s life is increasing and with it the marketing channels that help consumers find good deals, cheap prices, low shipping, or anything else that can save a penny here or there – Comparison Shopping Engines. 

Now is the time, more than ever before, to promote your products on CSEs.  Make sure you are ready for the holiday season, especially if the economy continues to tighten and consumers take these sentiments and trends into Q4 2008.

Redmond, WA: CSE Capital of the World

Microsoft announced recently that the $486 million acquisition of Greenfield Online, owner of the Ciao family comparison shopping sites. Ciao just launched in the US this year, but has been at the top of the heap in the German CSE market for some time. MSN will sell off the online survey piece of the business and retain only the Ciao properties, and apparently plans to wrap the consumer incentive function of Microsoft Live CashBack function (based on technology from their acquisition of Jellyfish.com) into the Ciao sites.

This seems like a reasonable plan to acquire users and revenue in Europe, but What does this means for the US market? MSN, who already owns MSN Shopping, MSN Live Product Search, and the aforementioned MSN Live CashBack, now has a fourth CSE property in the US. One can only think (and hope) that there is some consolidation/integration going on behind the scenes since they currently each require a separate feed. Throwing Ciao into that integration process makes for a lot of work. This work may pay off in EU where Ciao is already known, but it seems like in the US, keeping Ciao.com afloat may be more trouble than it is worth. It's another brand to build at a time when MSN should be focusing on their own brand's competition with Google. CSE's that have little brand recognition, such as Ciao in the US, are predominantly driven by marketing efforts. The efforts on Ciao's part have, so far, not had much impact in the US market, even with the "social" aspect helping them out. Those marketing dollars would be better spent in the US on something other than Ciao.com. MSN's ability to focus may be tested here.