Comparison Shopping Engines
Comparison shopping engines (CSE) are great for price conscious consumers looking for the best deals and an excellent marketing channel for retailers. Popular CSE sites are NexTag, Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, and Shopping which have to be the biggest in the industry. These engines range in size from the volume of traffic they generate to the number of merchants participating, and the variety of products offered on the site. Some other CSE sites are Google Base, Yahoo! Shopping, Shop, Pronto, Become, and can serve several niches which can be lifestyle oriented. There is also a reward site such as MSN’s Cashback which gives consumers money for purchasing through their site. There are many more CSE sites, but provided a short list of examples.
Retailers list their products on these engines by providing a data feed of their catalog. Since participating retailers have all of their information aggregated on a CSE, it makes it easy for the consumer to see all of the offerings and shop by price.
Consumers can see all of the listings, photos and reviews of the products, and sometimes reviews of retailer to see if they are a trusted merchant to purchase from. When a consumer clicks on a product, retailers incur a cost per click (CPC) or cost per acquisitions (CPA) based on the arrangement with the engine. The shopper is then redirected to the retailers website.
Comparison shopping engines are an excellent channel because the marketing investment is based on performance. Next time you shop, check a comparison shopping engine (CSE) for the best deals and make better informed purchasing decisions.
Since working for an internet retailer, I optimize comparison shopping engines to reduce marketing spend and figure out ways increase sales.
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Category: Internet Marketing
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