Jay Shaffer, the VP of Marketing for our partner PowerReviews, wrote an interesting post last week about their competitor Bazaarvoice (who is also one of our partners). It’s interesting because Jay is openly accusing Bazaarvoice of trying to copy some of the PowerReviews capabilities. It’s a very aggressive approach to this sort of problem.

While not taking sides in this issue (as they are both our partners), we typically try not to be so openly critical of our competitors in these situations because we don’t want to highlight them or tell them what they’re doing wrong.

As to the validity of what Jay is saying – I’ll let you read his post and talk to each company to decide for yourself. Because they’re both partners of ours I’ll remain neutral. We do have customers who are happy with the service from each of these companies. As far as I know they are the only vendors out there who will help you implement reviews on your site (let me know if I’m wrong). We have some customers who implement reviews themselves – as a rule I would recommend against this – the experts will do a better job (it applies to site search as well – but I’m biased about that). However I do recommend having reviews on your site – there are many benefits.

I doubt Bazaarvoice will respond directly – they probably don’t want to have a public slinging match.

5 thoughts to “PowerReviews vs Bazaarvoice

  • Jay Shaffer

    Hey there – thanks for taking the time to read my blog as well as recognizing the significance of this issue. Do take time to see the very poor customer review experience that is being provided by their poor understanding and application of tag-based review.

    Finally – thanks for the promotion – lol – I am just the VP of Sales and Marketing. I am not the CEO – that honor and distinction belongs to the very talented co-founder of our company, Mr. Andy Chen.

  • shaunr

    Hi Jay, I’ve corrected your role – sorry to you and Andy about the confusion there.

  • shaunr

    I’ve heard from BazaarVoice that there is another side to this story. I want to emphasise that although I’ve highlighted this conflict here, I’m not taking any sides. If you want to get to the bottom of it then you should talk to both companies.

  • David

    Welcome to business. It is a dog eat dog world. Sorry to hear that the Tea company switched companies. I am sure there are plenty of reasons why they did, even after the fact that they were using PowerReviews for free. This is an industry where switching costs are extremely high, and the tea company still switched. You don’t hear a beer companies CEO crying to the public that a competitor released a new beer flavor that they released 2 months prior… ie. Bud Light Lime…

  • Mike

    I have to agree with on this. As, I’m sure, most neutral participants would do.

    BazaarVoice has excellent technology and original programming in much of its offerings, from what I’ve researched (no, I have ZERO affiliation with them, before Shaffer jumps down my throat).

    Fact is, there next to NO originality left in the current world. It’s all a mix-up of a previous concept in some way.

    And business is business. Being the first on the block with an application ensures only one thing: there will be others.

    That’s business.

    Quite crying about it, and INNOVATE!

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