July 19, 2007 5:12 AM
Walmart Goes Social, Sort of
The world’s larges retail store is joining the web 2.0 bandwagon via a user-generated product reviews. These product reviews, which is similar to Amazon’s, is said to be the most requested feature from online users of the retailer’s site.
According to a Reuters report via Yahoo Tech News, with the soon-to-be activated feature, Walmart is not hoping to receive tremendous increase in sale. On the contrary, Walmart is hoping to increase shopper loyalty and encourage them to return to the site often.
Likewise, Walmart is also planning to interact with online shoppers who will review products featured on the online store and use the information that comes out of these product reviews for future decisions on product placement and sales strategy. All aimed at satisfying what their customers need and want.
Now, this is one feature that should have been done by Walmart a long time ago. I wonder what it took them so long to notice how product reviews affect consumers’ decision to buy or not to buy a product featured on online retail stores. Hopefully, this would encourage more shoppers to utilize Walmart’s online shopping facility. Especially now that Walmart had recently rolled out another great feature of its store, the Site-to-Store program, a facility which let shoppers buy a product online and have it shipped to a local Walmart store for pick-up by the buyer.
Are we seeing another successful venture into the online commerce by major industry player? Are we looking towards another great online commerce site similar to Amazon.com? That we will know as soon as the Walmart product reviews feature rolls out in a few days from now.
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