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SonyStyle.com Uses Personalized Recommendation Service To Guide Shoppers

Already deployed by a number of major consumer electronics, computer, and entertainment eRetailers, the Active Sales Assistant can be integrated into the "look and feel" of a licensee's own Web site. Retailers and manufacturers provide the service to their customers to increase online sales, customer confidence, brand loyalty, and site stickiness.

Sony Electronics e-Solutions Company LLC, incorporates the technology in its ecommerce web site. "Technology from Active helps us convert online shoppers into buyers,'"  said Brian Siegel, manager of new business development at Sony Electronics e-Solutions Company, which manages the more than 750 consumer electronics products and services on the SonyStyle.com web site. "Active's system, like a knowledgeable sales person, helps customers quickly determine which product best meets their individual needs."

Active Sales Assistant's interactive question-and-answer format hones in on consumer preferences, generating intelligent, personalized, value-based recommendations. Each retailer's latest pricing and product availability information is updated automatically via an XML feed. This service helps online shoppers make more timely, well-informed, and satisfying purchase decisions by recommending and comparing the products that best fit their personal priorities in terms of price and features. It also aggregates information about consumer preferences that can help retailers and manufacturers better understand their customers.

The same scalable technology that has been licensed to major portals such as Yahoo and Lycos is being used to power the recommendation engine in Active Sales Assistant. The software is extremely mature, having been used by tens of millions of online shoppers and having gone through two years of usability testing. The service also comes bundled with Active Product Spex, which provides comprehensive product specification data and photos that are always up-to-date.

"If an online retailer doesn't quickly differentiate itself by offering consumers the tools they need to make better choices, the competition is only a click away," said Tom DuBois, COO of Active Decisions. "80% of online shoppers that have used Active Sales Assistant intend to buy one of the recommended products. It is an extremely useful tool that saves shoppers both time and money. This increased customer satisfaction is reflected in higher sales conversion rates, greater retailer loyalty, fewer returns, and improved bottom line results."

"In today's fast-growing but highly competitive e-tailing environment, revenues count, but ROI is king," added Jeff Dunn, Active Decisions' president and CEO. "By helping our clients' customers make better purchase decisions, we dramatically reduce 'buyers remorse' and the costly product returns that go with it. At the same time, our highly automated decision-support technology dramatically reduces customer service costs for the e-tailers themselves. We also save them money by offering our Active Sales Assistant 'recommendation engine' at prices well below what it would cost them to develop this complex and sophisticated technology in-house."

Pricing and Availability

Prices for the fully integrated, site-specific service begin at $100,000.

Source:02/12/01 Active Decisions

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