SEATTLE, WA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- April 25, 2007 -- Mercent, a provider of online marketing
technology and services for retail merchants, today announced the latest
release of its on-demand platform, Mercent Retail, with enhanced
optimization tools for comparison shopping engines (CSEs), shopping
portals, online marketplaces, and affiliate programs.
Included with the new version of Mercent Retail is Mercent TrueAttribute™
technology, providing retail merchants with simple and powerful tools for
optimizing the performance of attribute-based product search across online
shopping channels. Attribute-based product search allows consumers to
quickly find exact product results using product attributes and keywords as
search, sort, and filter criteria. TrueAttribute™ allows Mercent to
identify and publish relevant and exact product attributes for every
product SKU to any attribute-based shopping channel on behalf of retail
merchants.
"With this newest version of Mercent Retail and TrueAttribute™ technology,
Mercent delivers additional shopping channel intelligence for
brand-conscious online merchants," said Eric Best, CEO of Mercent. "We are
pleased to further enhance Mercent's role as a trusted channel advisor to
leading retailers including REI, GUESS? and Celebrate Express."
Mercent first launched software to manage product attributes across online
shopping channels in 2002, the first year that Amazon.com launched the
Merchants@Amazon.com program and implemented product attributes within its
feed specifications. Mercent TrueAttribute™ builds upon Mercent's
five-year history of product attribute optimization by offering retail
merchants the following features and benefits:
-- TrueAttribute™ Data Sources - Mercent looks beyond the e-commerce
catalog to collect and append data from any retail data source, including
product planning, retail merchandising, replenishment, item master, point
of sale (POS) or content management system.
-- TrueAttribute™ Merchandising - Mercent applies TrueAttribute™
technology to efficiently discover, collect, map and append explicit
product attribute data for maximum retail performance. Mercent customers
create and syndicate unique and competitive offers while avoiding use of a
universal taxonomy or product unification approach that may compromise
competitive differentiation across shopping portals, marketplaces and
comparison shopping engines (CSEs).
-- TrueAttribute™ Support for Structured and Unstructured Attributes -
Mercent can manage and syndicate any structured data from any retail
system. Mercent supports unstructured attributes via TrueAttribute™ data
discovery and content management tools.
-- TrueAttribute™ Support for Complex Product Variations and Unlimited
Custom Attributes - Mercent supports an unlimited number of custom product
attributes to better promote and differentiate product listings across
channels. Mercent supports all parent and child SKU relationships, and
variations in product attributes among child SKUs.
Mercent Retail with TrueAttribute™ technology syndicates product attribute
data to any existing or custom data feed target, including:
-- Online Marketplaces - Mercent supports all current product attributes,
item types and classification guides specified by shopping-cart enabled
marketplaces like Amazon.com, SHOP.COM and Shopping.com.
-- Google Product Search - Mercent supports all product types and product
attributes defined by Google Product Search (formerly Google Base), and
provides merchants with tools to easily define custom attributes to
competitively differentiate product listings.
-- Comparison Shopping Engines and Affiliate Programs - Mercent supports
the product types, product attributes and attribute feeds specified by MSN
Shopping and LinkShare, among a growing number of channels with attribute
feed specifications.
Retail merchants can learn more about Mercent Retail and TrueAttribute™
technology by visiting Mercent at Booth #926 at Internet Retailer 2007
Conference & Exhibition June 4 - 7 in San Jose, CA -- or by visiting
Mercent online at
www.mercent.com/solutions.
About Mercent
Founded by veterans of Amazon.com, Mercent provides online marketing
technology and services to help retail merchants optimize performance
across online channels. Mercent's on-demand platform, Mercent Retail,
increases revenue and gross margins by promoting the right products with
the right merchandising offers and placement. Mercent Retail provides a
single point of integration between existing retail management systems and
more than 35 leading online marketing channels including transactional
marketplaces such as Amazon.com and SHOP.COM, shopping portals such as
Shopping.com and Shopzilla, and affiliate marketing programs such as
LinkShare and Performics -- making it easy for merchants to automate,
measure, and optimize online product merchandising campaigns through these
channels. Mercent customers include REI, GUESS?, Lucky Brand Jeans,
SmartBargains, Wet Seal, Proflowers, Celebrate Express, Crabtree & Evelyn,
Levenger, and other leading retailers. Mercent is an Amazon.com Certified
System Integrator and SHOP.COM Certified Data Feed Provider. The company is
venture-funded and based in Seattle, WA. For more information, visit
www.mercent.com.
For the latest Mercent news, visit
www.mercent.com/news